“[Rick and Karen Santorum] have spent the past three years caring for their daughter Isabella, whose genetic defect, trisomy 18, is an early death sentence. ‘Almost 100 percent of trisomy 18 children are encouraged to be aborted,’ Santorum [points out]. I am haunted by the smiling photos I’ve seen of Isabella with her father and mother, brothers and sisters. No doubt she struggles through many of her days—she nearly died a few weeks ago—but she has also been granted three years of unconditional love and the ability to smile and bring joy. All right, I can hear you saying, the Santorum family’s course may be admirable, but shouldn’t we have the right to make our own choices? Yes, I suppose. But I also worry that we’ve become too averse to personal inconvenience as a society, and I’m grateful to Santorum for forcing on me the discomfort of having to think about the moral implications of his daughter’s smile.”
Joe Klein in Time
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