A French high court has established a "shocking and aberrant principle" that a person born with handicaps has a "right not to be born," the Vatican newspaper said.

A French high court July 13 confirmed a lower court's November ruling that the parents of a handi-. capped child and/or the child can sue a doctor who did not inform the mother of the risk her baby would be handicapped and offer her the option of abortion.

The ruling, known as the "Perruche sentence," based on the name of the family involved, concerns a couple whose son was born deaf, partially blind and mentally disabled in 1983 after the mother caught rubella during her pregnancy, but was not diagnosed as having the disease.

Franciscan Father Gino Concetti, writing in the July 15 edition of L'Osservatore Romano, quoted French human rights and pro-life groups as saying the sentence "explicitly recognizes that it is better to die than be born handicapped."

The high court, he said, "recognized a shocking and aberrant principle: A handicapped person can ask for damages from a doctor who, mistaking a diagnosis, does not give the mother a chance to decide to abort."

Father Concetti said associations of people with disabilities are right "to feel offended" by the court's decision.

The right to life is fundamental and no individuals, no matter what their condition, can be denied that right, he said.

"To kill an innocent human being in its mother's womb is an abominable crime against human life," he said.

Father Concetti said prenatal tests are perfectly legitimate as long as they serve the life and the health of the unborn child, "not murderous ends."

Vatican Radio July 14 said the sentence, in effect, says: "If the doctor knows the baby will be born handicapped, he has the moral obligation to advise a therapeutic abortion. If he does not, he is automatically responsible for that handicap and as such is obliged to pay damages to the little one 'forced' to come into the world when he could have avoided so much suffering." -CNS