Evolutionary biologist Richard Dawkins has criticized the government of Paraguay's decision not to perform a late-term abortion on a raped 11-year-old girl and slammed Republican presidential hopeful Mike Huckabee for agreeing with the ruling.
"Mike Huckabee demonstrates how truly loathsome faith-based "morality" can be. People have been known to vote for him," the controversial atheist professor wrote Thursday on his Twitter page.
"The moral decision is starkly simple. A raped 10-year-old suffers. The fetus that threatens to ruin her life does not," he added.
According to CNN, the Paraguayan girl was raped by her stepfather when she was 10, and gave birth to a healthy girl last week via Caesarean section, shortly after her 11th birthday. The young girl reportedly named her daughter Milagros, which is Spanish for miracles.
Although the young girl's mother had asked the government to allow her daughter to have a late-term abortion, Paraguay refused to grant permission for the procedure.
The news outlet notes that the traditionally Roman Catholic South American country has one of the strictest abortion laws in the world, and bans abortions except in cases where the pregnancy endangers the mother's life.
In the case of the 11-year-old, doctors ruled that, in spite of her age, the pregnancy did not endanger her life. Violation of the law carries a maximum sentence of five years in prison.
While the ruling has been criticized by many human rights groups, Republican presidential hopeful Mike Huckabee said in an interview that taking the life of the unborn baby would not have solved the horrific incident.
"Let nobody be misled, a 10-year-old girl being raped is horrible. But does it solve the problem by taking the life of an innocent child - that's really the issue," Huckabee told CNN on Sunday.
"When an abortion happens, there are two victims," the GOP candidate added. "One is the child, the other is that birth mother, who often will go through extraordinary guilt years later when she begins to think through what happened, with the baby, with her."
Huckabee, who is also a Fox News contributor and Baptist pastor, stated, "I just come out on the side that life is precious, every life has worth and value."
The Huffington Post notes that Huckabee has historically taken a firm stance against abortion and suggested last month that he would consider using federal troops to stop women from accessing the procedure.
Dawkins, on the other hand, previously drew criticism over his comments concerning unborn children diagnosed with Down syndrome.
In a Twitter message in August 2014, the The God Delusion author emphasized that parents of such babies should "abort it and try again," because it would be "immoral" to have such a child.
Amid backlash, Dawkins later issued an apology for the way he phrased his thoughts on the issue.
"My phraseology may have been tactlessly vulnerable to misunderstanding, but I can't help feeling that at least half the problem lies in a wanton eagerness to misunderstand," Dawkins wrote.
