WHENEVER Amnesty International is chastised for its new abortion policy, which is more frequently than they thought, representatives of the organisation’s leadership rush to defend themselves and claim they are being misinterpreted.
“Amnesty does not,” they claim, “advocate abortion as a human right. It recognises abortion as a sexual and reproductive right and so it can’t stand by and let this right be ignored.”
At the same time they make the claim that AI still has no position on whether abortion is good or bad and also claim AI still has no view on when life begins (if this were indeed the case, then the Amnesty leadership might explain why they are happy to take a chance that innocent people are having fundamental rights removed by being aborted, without AI making any comment).
“AS ABORTION brings about the death of a child before birth, it clearly violates the right of a child to life. What then of the mother and any rights she might claim? The position in relation to children’s rights versus adult rights should be clear and is arguably covered by the paramountcy principle which states that: “the welfare of the child is paramount” and this is enshrined in International, European and UK legislative frameworks, hence the Children Act 1989″ – 
make during the less-than-impartial consultation period. [In an interview with the Weltwoche from Switzerland Irene Khan said: There is no human right to life for a fetus.
Save Amnesty International 
September 7, 2007
What we think
Posted by weefrog under abortion, ai, amnesty, Amnesty International, anti-abortion, Campaign, catholic, comment, groups, human rights, international law, law, life, pro-life, religion, Sexual and reproductive rights, un, united nations, women's rightsLeave a Comment
I HAD AN email this morning about the blog asking why there was so much information from the Catholic Church. We’re always happy to hear from people and you can email us at saveamnesty @ gmail.com (you’ll need to remove the spaces on either side of the @ symbol – they’re added to reduce spam).
We do have a lot of information from the Catholic Church and the Catholic hierarchy – that is because many of the Church’s statements reflects the position we hold over this issue and the Church has been more vocal about the issue than any other organisation. But we have stressed in the past that this is not just a Catholic matter – and in the blog there are links to comments on the issue from different Christian denominations, other religions, including Islam, and those with no faith. We would be delighted to consider all comments from different religious groups and those with no affinity – and would be grateful for any information on this.
While we freely admit that we object to Amnesty International’s newly adopted abortion policy on moral and ethical grounds, that is far from our only objection and concern; for example, we’ve argued in the past that the policy is: