Philadelphia, Pa., May 6, 2010 / 23:06 pm
His daughter with trisomy 18 is a loving child at the center of his family’s life, former U.S. Sen. Rick Santorum has said. Though she has taught character and virtue to everyone he meets, he lamented that so many children with her condition are aborted or face doctors with a “negative perception” towards the severely disabled.
In a Wednesday column for the Philadelphia Inquirer, Santorum told of how he and his wife were aggrieved when doctors told them their newborn child, Isabella Maria, had a condition which was “incompatible with life.”
Their eighth child, Bella was born with trisomy 18, 90 percent of whose victims die before or during birth and 90 percent of survivors die within the first year. Most of those diagnosed in the womb are aborted.
The infant was baptized the same day she was born. Rick Santorum and his wife Karen then spent “every waking hour at her bedside, giving her a lifetime's worth of love and care,” the former senator wrote. “However, not only did she not die; she came home in just 10 days.”