AMNESTY INTERNATIONAL BETRAYS ITS MISSION!
June 18, 2007 by Father Joe
A few years ago I recommended that Catholics and other pro-lifers should cancel their membership with the NAACP when the organization took a serious and active national stand in favor of abortion. Indeed, the only way a chapter was permitted at Catholic University was with the understanding that it would in no way support, condone or participate in the national agenda in favor of murdering unborn babies. I found it particularly ironic and sad that a great civil rights organization would now “inadvertently” align itself with white supremacists who support abortion in the African-American community as a means of exterminating people of color. Given the percentage of abortions in the black community, it is unmistakably a form of racial genocide and so-called cleansing.
Now, another human rights organization has lost its soul and embraced a false compassion by adopting a pro-abortion policy, AMNESTY INTERNATIONAL. Given that the organization was started by a Catholic, this news absolutely breaks my heart:
http://www.catholicnews.com/data/stories/cns/0703410.htm
AMNESTY-ABORTION Jun-14-2007
After Vatican criticism, Amnesty defends new policy on abortion (By Simon Caldwell)LONDON (CNS) — Amnesty International has defended its new policy on abortion after a Vatican official said Catholics might need to withdraw their financial support of the organization.
The Amnesty policy adopted in April supported access to comprehensive medical care, including safe abortion, for women who have become pregnant from rape, sexual assault or incest, or whose lives or health “are at grave risk due to pregnancy.” The new policy also urges governments to ensure access to health and other services to women who have complications from unsafe abortions. It opposes imprisonment and other criminal penalties for having, providing information about or performing abortions.
In April, Amnesty adopted a new policy advocating the global decriminalization of abortion, following an international consultation that arose from the group’s Stop Violence Against Women campaign.
Amnesty now supports a right to abortion for women impregnated by rape or incest or in cases of grave risks to the mother’s health or life.
At its international council meeting in Mexico in August, Amnesty will consider expanding its policy on abortion. It said it would decide the question of whether a woman’s “right to physical and mental integrity includes her right to terminate her pregnancy.
At least the Catholic Church is still raising her voice against the slaughter of children! I can see no other alternative than Catholics withdrawing support and ending any affiliation. The Church had been a major partner and sponsor for AMNESTY. But, we cannot support a pro-choice/pro-abortion policy!
Kate Gilmore, their deputy secretary general, tried to make excuses and a rationalization for the change:
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.
Ours is a movement dedicated to upholding human rights, not specific theologies. It means that sometimes the secular framework of human rights that Amnesty International upholds will converge neatly with the standpoints of certain faith-based communities; sometimes it will not.
The human life of a child in the womb is not simply a “theology”, it is a biological fact! AMNESTY is saying that the unborn child has no rights and value. The secular framework of AMNESTY has been infected by the culture of death. AMNESTY has fought against tribal genocide and racial apartheid, arguing that everyone should have the same rights and opportunities. But now when they have a chance to truly shine, they strip the unborn child of his or her rights. I am ashamed that I have long supported and praised AMNESTY. They have let the whole world down.
A woman should be free to have her child without fear of recrimination or further oppression. How a child is conceived is not the child’s fault and I suspect that this element of their policy will be further liberalized. If they go down this road, mark my words, they will end up supporting the wholesale murder of children in abortion on demand. Nothing is said here about how abortion is used against poor women. They are raped or forced into prostitution and then are urged to have abortions. There is no way that AMNESTY will be able to insure that all these future abortions they advocate will be free decisions of mothers! Their position against forced-abortions will quickly become mute.
We do not even have such freedom in the United States. I have known young girls who wanted their babies, but parents would not let them come home until or unless they had abortions. We tried to protect one teenager in the courts a few years ago, but the judge gave her back to her mother and her mother drove her straight to an abortion clinic. If we cannot guarantee a lack of coercion here, the Pandora’s box will never be closed in more violent and dictatorial societies.
The statement itself, said:
Amnesty International’s actual policy … standing alongside its long-standing opposition to forced abortion, is to support the decriminalization of abortion, to ensure women have access to health care when complications arise from abortion and to defend women’s access to abortion, within reasonable gestational limits, when their health or human rights are in danger.
The Amnesty International people are spouting the same propaganda as many pro-choice advocates and politicians here in the U.S. They are saying that they merely support CHOICE and that as an organization they neither promote abortion nor say anything either way about whether it is right or wrong. Of course, this is nonsense, allowing abortion implies the immediate assumption, at least from decent people, that abortion is not wrong or murder. Only those who oppose abortion are consistent. Abortion can never be allowed because it violates the right of the child to life and the physical integrity of the unborn person.
Larry Cox director of the USA branch of AMNESTY INTERNATIONAL tried to make a response to “Catholics Against Capital Punishment”. It sounded like jargon from the most die-hard pro-abortionists of the democrat party:
…in the context of war, rape has been used as a brutal instrument of domination. It is committed with the deliberate intention of causing pregnancy, thereby destroying community and family bonds through the pernicious influences of humiliation and shame.
In reference to nations with anti-abortion laws, he added that raped women “have suffered terribly botched abortions that have had a debilitating impact on their health and, in certain cases, resulted in death.”
Planned Parenthood and Hillary Clinton could not have said it better, we have to allow mothers the right to kill their children legally because otherwise they might die in back-alley abortions. While it is statistically quite rare in the U.S., we have also heard the hackneyed rape scenario; but absent in all this language is anything about the rights of the child. In the face of an unwanted pregnancy, AMNESTY INTERNATIONAL will grant no amnesty, even for nine months, for the child. Instead, they now place every child in the womb upon death row.
Some churchmen have argued that monetary support could still be given to AMNESTY INTERNATIONAL as long as there were assurances that those funds would not go to abortions. However, money in one area frees money to be used in others, including abortion. In any case, the possibility is a mute one. Eulette Ewart of AMNESTY has said there will be no such assurances:
It is slightly difficult because we are not campaigning for abortion, so no money would go to that, and our money is not divided up that way. What we are saying is that in dire situations women should have the right to a safe and legal abortion if they so wish.
It is clear now that AMNESTY has been hijacked by radical pro-abortionists and that they will turn this wonderful human rights organization into the very monster they have always fought against! They will pump money into organizations like Planned Parenthood and deliver those seeking help from them into the hands of greedy and bloody abortionists. No doubt they will also turn their legal machinery against those countries and states that outlaw or restrict abortions. That means that insteady of an ally, they will quickly become an enemy to the Church. Oh God, save us from this false compassion that would allow mothers to destroy their babies!
Cardinal Renato Martino, head of the Pontifical Council for Justice and Peace, says it best:
To selectively justify abortion, even in the cases of rape, is to define the innocent child within the womb as an enemy, a ‘thing’ that must be destroyed. How can we say that killing a child in some cases is good and in other cases it is evil?
I believe that, if in fact Amnesty International persists in this course of action, individuals and Catholic organizations must withdraw their support because, in deciding to promote abortion rights, AI has betrayed its mission.
I understand where you are coming from. Foetuses in the womb are alive, and should also have their own rights, and killing them when they have no say is wrong. But in the case of countries like Pakistan, for example, it is hopelessly difficult to convict a rapist (the victim needs to have at least two witnesses on her side who will argue for her) and society almost always supports the man. Women are stoned to death for adultery when they are raped. Even if they live they will be forever shamed.
In 2004, government-sponsored militia carried out attacks on villages in Darfur, Africa. This included raping of the Sudanese women. Victims later told of how they were never accepted in society again, could never marry, and their children were always discriminated against. Amnesty is not advocating abortions. It just wants to help women who have suffered mental anguish from being raped to have a choice. If you say that the unborn children should have a choice in deciding their birth or death, shouldn’t the women too have a right in deciding whether they will be able to care for their child and whether the child should be allowed to come into a world where he will be treated with contempt?
IFFYGRACE,
What you say about AMNESTY INTERNATIONAL is not substantiated by their remarks. Note that many of them plan on expanding their pro-abortion position to including a woman’s so-called “right to physical and mental integrity” that would permit her “to terminate her pregnancy” at any time or any place! The oppressed women of Africa and India are an excuse for a pro-abortion position that they would impose upon the worldwide organization. They are essentially taking the moral wrong of abortion off the table and taking a pro-abortion stand. We should try to change societies and make cultures more respectful of women and the unborn child. The answer is not to play by their rules and to destroy children. What they suggest is to participate with the oppressors.
It is a tragedy if a woman is raped, do not get me wrong, but compounding it with another wrong, the murder of children will not make things better.
I would rather enter a world where I am held in contempt and oppressed than not to come into the world at all. Such a mentality as you propose would have excused the murder of black children. Critics could say it was better to die in the womb than to be born into slavery or segregation. No, human life is a higher value than such social problems.
I have a friend who was the product of a rape. Such thinking as exposed here would argue that it would have been better had she never been born. But, she is a beautiful and talented young woman with deep faith and strong moral convictions. She is already changing the world for the better, just by her presence. AMNESTY INTERNATIONAL would deprive us of such children.
I also knew a woman who had eight children but became very ill with the last one. Although Maronite Catholics, I visited her in the hospital and brought her communion. The doctors at the Washington Hospital Center were very blunt with her. They told her that if she went forward with this pregnancy it would kill her. Termination of the pregnancy would give her a good chance for recovery. I prayed with her and her husband. Deeply pro-life, she told everyone that there was no way that she could destroy her baby. Her husband wanted her to live but he also respected her judgment and values regarding life. She prayed that God would protect her children and help her husband. Her capacity to love was astonishing. He held her hand when she gave premature birth to their son. He is now a fine strong boy. Her husband also held her as she died in his arms. Don’t tell me about women who try to save themselves at the cost of their children! This woman here showed us all what a true mother is about! Every mother should be willing to embrace martyrdom for her child. That is holiness. There is the truth!
The woman’s choice is usually to have sexual relations or not. However, once pregnant, even if through violence and manipulation, her only legitimate choice is to give birth to that child. Human life is incommensurate. The intention and the direct act of killing an innocent human being is always wrong! AMNESTY INTERNATIONAL used to believe this, but no more!
Joseph took Mary into his home and he protected her and raised Jesus as his own. According to Jewish law, Mary could have been stoned to death for getting pregnant. AMNESTY INTERNATIONAL would have urged her to abort her child in an effort to avoid social stigma and possible punishment. We need to find more men like Joseph who will shelter women and help them to raise their children.