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Vatican urges end to Amnesty aid
The Vatican has urged all Catholics to stop donating money to Amnesty International, accusing the human rights group of promoting abortion.

The Vatican, which regards life as sacred from the moment of conception, said it was an "inevitable consequence" of the group's policy change.

Amnesty said it was not promoting abortion as a universal right.

But the group said that women had a right to choose, particularly in cases of rape or incest.

"No more financing of Amnesty International after the organisation's pro-abortion about-turn," said a statement from the Roman Catholic Church's Pontifical Council for Justice and Peace.

The Church's request covers funding from Catholic groups, non-governmental organisations, parishes, schools and individuals.

'Misrepresented account'

The council's president, Cardinal Renato Martino, described abortion as "murder".

"And to justify it selectively, in the event of rape, that is to define an innocent child in the belly of its mother as an enemy, as 'something one can destroy'," the cardinal said.

According to Roman Catholic doctrine, life - which begins with conception - must be respected.

Amnesty says it does not take any position on whether abortion is right or wrong.

But it defended its new position in support of abortion for women when their health is in danger or human rights are violated, especially in cases of rape or incest.

"We are saying broadly that to criminalise women's management of their sexual reproductive right is the wrong answer," Amnesty's deputy Secretary General Kate Gilmore told Reuters news agency.

"The Catholic Church, through a misrepresented account of our position on selective aspects of abortion, is placing in peril work on human rights," Ms Gilmore said.

Some 45 million unintended pregnancies are terminated around the world every year, the World Health Organisation says.

Nearly 70,000 women die annually from unsafe abortions, it says.

Vatican urges end to Amnesty aid (http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/europe/6750887.stm)

Amnesty International is now part of evil it set out to oppose
The decision of Amnesty International to support, indeed to campaign for abortion, is not just a change of policy in one area, horrific though that is.

Rather, Amnesty has destroyed the very foundation of its whole work. Worse, it has become part of the evil it set out to oppose.

Amnesty was founded on one basic principle which could be put thus: “Do not commit violence against the innocent.” This was developed into various human rights, but it remained the key, absolute principle.

In opting to support lethal violence against the most innocent of all, the unborn child, Amnesty has abandoned that principle. As a result, it can no longer call on others to uphold it.

It can no longer criticise any country which tortures or ‘eliminates’ those whom it regards as a threat to state security. It can no longer condemn police who use brutality against peaceful protesters.

Amnesty has decided that some innocent human beings may be brutally killed. On what grounds can it object if a police force or a state decides that people whom it sees as a threat may be tortured or killed?

Rather, these regimes may logically use Amnesty’s position on the killing of the unborn to justify their own ‘necessary’ brutality. What a perversion of the original aims of the organisation!

Amnesty may continue to do good work but we can no longer support it. It is now, fundamentally, a promoter of the culture of death. Whatever good it may do is tiny compared to the immense respect or legitimacy it now gives to violence and brutality.

Amnesty International is now part of evil it set out to oppose (http://www.alive.ie/editorsjottings.php#editorsjottings2)

Amnesty has become what they started out trying to fight.

I have to agree wholeheartedly with the pope and catholics on this one. It's still murdering an innocent life in the womb regardless of how it got there