Amnesty International’s pro-abortion policy provokes Roman Catholic leaders’s discontentment

In May in Mexico, leaders of Amnesty International have reaffirmed during a meeting the pro-abortion policy adopted by its executive board one month earlier.

A decision that Cardinal Renato Martino, president of the Vatican’s Pontifical Council for Justice and Peace, disapproves; he said that Catholics worldwide would boycott the international organisation if it didn’t reverse the position at their biennial meeting.

As a response to the Cardinal’s statement, Amnesty’s Deputy General Secretary, Kate Gilmore told The Independent newspaper that,

“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.”

Following the vote of Amnesty International to endorse abortion, the Rt. Rev. Michael Evans, Bishop of East Anglia, has resigned, having been actively involved with the organisation for 31 years.

“There are undoubtedly many Catholics who will now sadly have to withdraw membership,” he said. “Bishops, priests and lay people will have to make a very serious decision about their memberships, and I would expect them to make the same decision.”

“Among all human rights, the right to life is fundamental and this decision will almost certainly divide Amnesty’s membership and thereby undermine its vital work,” he said.

The bishop added that the Catholic Church shared Amnesty’s strong commitment to opposing violence against women. “Appalling violence must not be answered by violence against the most vulnerable and defenceless form of human life in a woman’s womb,”

Besides, Julia Millington, Political Director of the ProLife Alliance commented Amnesty’s current campaign posters which carry the slogan “Protect the Human,”’. She said abour these posters and the recent decision of the organisation as regard to abortion, “It is incomprehensible that they would exclude an entire class of human beings from protection.”