Amnesty International: What Part of Murder Don't You Understand?
Abortion is murder. It is not a human right. An unwanted pregnancy for an unmarried woman, especially as a result of rape or incest or in a war zone, is a very difficult thing, but with enough love, care and effort it can be turned into a beautiful thing, no matter what the circumstances. Abortion can never be turned into a good thing. The pro-life movement says, "Why not love them both?", but all efforts are taken to drown out the voice of reason.
Abortion sweeps the problem under the rug and makes the situation "easier" for everyone involved except the woman who must live with the aftermath, and of course, the child who is murdered. Human rights organizations have a mission to provide love, care and effort to help bring about the best possible outcome. Why else do they exist but to bring justice to terrible situations? Abortion is a grotesque injustice.
This is why it is so disappointing that Amnesty International has abandoned the unborn child as deserving human rights protection. Now, this once great human rights organization has bought into the lie that one person's rights over their own body trumps the rights of another person's - the unborn child's - right to life.
Amnesty International's Widney Brown has actually come out and said that: "[The pregnant woman's] right to health and the right to the quality of life that she needs and the healing that she needs, this is what we would say should be the priority," (The National Catholic Register, "No Amnesty for the Unborn," June 12-23). There is no healing to be found in abortion. Abortion is something from which a woman needs to be healed.
Abortion is murder. This is an objective fact. Today it has reached the point of genocide. It is a grave injustice and violation of human rights. It is something Amnesty International should be addressing as a violation not treating as a solution. The humanity of the unborn child is not an "imposition" of one's morality or "religious values" on another. The humanity of the unborn child is an empirical scientific fact. By applying a sliding scale to the value of any innocent human life, Amnesty International has removed any fixed moral standard to which to anchor their mission. As C.S. Lewis would say, they have sawed off the branch on which they were sitting. They have abandoned their moral leverage and joined the tyrants who stand on lies that permit the killing to continue.
Their claim to be a "voice for the voiceless" does not extend to the innocent human being in the womb. By throwing in with the international abortion lobby they have abandoned the moral high ground on which they stood that gave credibility to their mission, opting instead for the quicksand of moral relativism.
Cardinal Renato Martino, president of the Pontifical Council for Justice and Peace stated in the same National Catholic Register article cited above, that Amnesty International has "betrayed its mission" and that if "Amnesty International persists in this course of action, individuals and Catholic organizations must withdraw their support." Amnesty International, of course, responded with the usual smug doublespeak of the Culture of Death.
Of all people, Amnesty International ought to know that killing only begets more killing and this decision has rendered the world a less safe place.
HLI challenges Amnesty International to prove that abortion is anything less than murder - an abuse of the most basic human right - the right to life.
Sincerely Yours in Christ,
Rev. Thomas J. Euteneuer,President, Human Life International
www.hli.org
