Shocking ruling: 'right not to be born'.

Paris--The Vatican has joined the French attorney general in deploring a judgment by supreme court judges in Paris that a handicapped person can receive compensation for being born.

Fr. Gino Concetti, writing in L'Osservatore Romano earlier this month, said the French court had established a "shocking and aberrant principle" in its 13 July ruling that Nicolas Perruche, who is 17, is able to claim damages from doctors whose "error" resulted in his birth.

His mother, Josette, has already received compensation after a hospital in Orleans, central France, failed in 1983 to detect she had rubella when pregnant. She says she would certainly have had an abortion had she known she had rubella, which resulted in her son Nicolas being born deaf, partially blind, and mentally disabled. Mme. Perruche has argued that her son should be compensated for being born.

The ruling means that a person born handicapped has a "right not to be born," said Fr. Concetti, and "explicitly recognizes that it is better to die than be born handicapped." According to a Vatican Radio report, the sentence effectively means that a doctor who knows a baby will be born handicapped has the moral obligation to advise abortion. Failure to do so would mean that "he is automatically responsible for that handicap" and therefore liable for damages.