Amnesty International was founded by a Catholic convert. Now leading Church voices warn Catholics against supporting the organization. Our suggestion: Why not write letters to Amnesty International, demanding that they honor the human rights of the unborn?
BY The Editors
July 1-7, 2007 Issue |
Posted 6/19/07 at 7:00 AM
Amnesty International has fallen a long, long way from the
high perch it once occupied. Now, the human rights organization that did
so much good for prisoners of conscience is reduced to baldly
misrepresenting facts in a desperate attempt to escape the consequences of its
own actions.
The moral of the story: Abortion is the opposite of
King Midas. It corrupts everything it touches.
Amnesty International was founded in the early 1960s by a
Catholic convert, Peter Benenson. Like its passionate, eclectic founder, the
organization led with its heart and followed an unpredictable trajectory. Some
have called it too anti-establishment. Others have called it too politically
correct. But there’s no denying Amnesty’s success.
If the pen is mightier than the sword, then Amnesty
International organized a formidable army in the 1970s and 1980s. It
disseminated the names of prisoners of conscience and the addresses of their
captors. Those were the targets. Then it mobilized professional people, shut-ins,
college students and stay-at-home moms — anybody they could find — to
write letters.
It was a unique kind of activist organization. You didn’t
just become a benefactor to Amnesty International; you became a direct
participant in the effort to free prisoners of conscience.
But from the 1990s to today, that mission shifted. It may
have started with the rock concerts in the late 1980s. As Amnesty raised more
money, it began to look less like a scrappy street fighter for the little guy
and more like the bloated international corporations in the grievance business.
And, as U.N. watcher Austin Ruse told the Register, the
organization also began unofficially favoring the idea that the right to life
isn’t a human right, and that the right to kill unborn children is.
In April, that stance
became official.
Amnesty International became a formal abortion promoter,
advocating for the right to kill unborn children — not just in cases where the
mother had been the victim of rape, but in cases where the mother’s health or
life were in danger. Legally, of course, that means they promote any abortion
for any reason — because pregnancy is always related to the health and future
life of the mother.
Last week, the Register featured an exclusive interview with
Cardinal Renato Martino calling on Catholics to pull support from Amnesty
International now that it has become an opponent of the fundamental human
right, the right to life.
A follow-up press release from Cardinal Martino’s Pontifical
Council for Justice and Peace received worldwide press attention along with the
Register. Amnesty International was quick to respond.
To the organization’s great shame, Kate Gilmore decided not
to address the real concerns former supporters had, but to obfuscate the issue
instead. Gilmore is the executive deputy secretary general of Amnesty
International.
“Amnesty International’s position is not for abortion as a
right but for women’s human rights to be free of fear, threat and coercion as
they manage all consequences of rape and other grave human rights violations,”
she said.
Her words flatly misstate Amnesty International’s policy
that, as quoted on the organization’s website, isn’t limited to rape.
“Women must have access to safe and legal abortion services
where continuation of pregnancy poses a risk to their life or grave risk to
their health,” it says, using the loophole language that allows abortion at any
time for any reason.
Newspapers like the UK’s Daily Mail repeated the
misinformation from Amnesty International’s press release without correcting
it. But even readers who were thus misinformed reacted negatively to Amnesty’s
rebirth as an abortion activist group.
“So rape victims in Darfur are stoned and the best solution
that Amnesty can offer is abortion?!” wrote one London reader of the Daily
Mail. “Why is it that the only solution offered to women who are poor, abused
or stigmatized, if pregnant outside of marriage, is to end the life of their
baby? I thought we were supposed to be liberated.”
Amnesty tried to argue that opposition to abortion is
“theological.” They know better. The right to life is a universally recognized
human right — and our understanding of unborn life is no longer what it was in
the Middle Ages. We all have children, nephews or nieces whose first photos were
taken in utero. There is no longer any doubt about what abortion is: killing.
That’s why abortion is King Midas in reverse. It corrupts
everything it touches.
In order to support abortion, its advocates must first lie
to themselves. Once committed to a lie, they will have a hard time telling the
truth to the rest of us.
Write to Amnesty International and tell them to have mercy
on those who are being unfairly denied their rights: the unborn. Find links to
the appropriate addresses at:
http://web.amnesty.org/links
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