“MATCHING GIFT CAMPAIGN DEADLINE: AUGUST 31, 2007,” headlined
the direct mail letter from Amnesty International. Executive
Director Larry Cox said, “I can’t stress strongly enough how
important it is for Amnesty International to maximize our resources
at this critical moment.”
I’ve given to AI before. Not to support domestic civil
liberties, which Cox emphasized, since there are plenty of domestic
groups to fight that battle. But to promote international human
rights. Even during the Cold War Amnesty criticized communist
regimes as well as authoritarian right-wing dictatorships.
One of AI’s current targets is China. Amnesty recently issued a
report entitled “The Olympics countdown — one year left to fulfil
human rights promises.” The document provides an unsparing look at
Beijing’s violations of basic human rights.
But I won’t be giving anymore. AI’s international council
recently backed the executive board’s earlier decision to
effectively treat abortion as a basic human right, with nary a nod
to the rights of the human being whose life is snuffed out.
Amnesty has gone a bit nutty on policy before. Some time ago the
organization adopted the death penalty as an issue, thereby putting
capital punishment alongside extra-judicial murder as a violation
of the right to life. No doubt, many bad regimes abuse their power
by executing political opponents. And there are plenty of policy
arguments to use against reliance on the death penalty even in
America. But it is bizarre to contend that executing a murderer
violates his human rights. One can equally argue that not imposing
the supreme penalty, at least in the most heinous circumstances,
violates the rights of the victim.
Still, AI’s opposition to capital punishment was only an
irritant to me. I’m conflicted on the issue and it’s not a
deal-breaker.
Now Amnesty is pushing for abortion. The organization has
created an odd disjunction: life is so precious that even a
murderer must be saved, but an unborn child is so unimportant that
he may be killed. AI never satisfactorily explains the
inconsistency, claiming that both the death penalty and “unsafe and
illegal abortion” raise “issues of the right to life and cruel,
inhuman and degrading treatment or punishment.” But Amnesty never
mentions the person being killed in either case. A murderer has a
right to life. A baby does not.
PERHAPS EMBARRASSED AT ITS SOPHISTRY, AI has attempted to downplay
its pro-abortion position. The organization issued a press release
at the time blandly explaining that AI backed “the rights of women
and girls to be free from threat, force, or coercion as they
exercise their sexual and reproductive rights.”
What right-thinking person could support coercing someone as
“they exercise their sexual and reproductive rights”? But
everything depends on the definition of sexual and reproductive
rights.
No one believes that women should be subject to rape or forced
to have sex in any fashion. No one believes that women should be
forced to terminate the child or children they are carrying, as
once was the case in China. No one believes that women should be
threatened if they don’t accept sterilization, as once was the case
for men in India.
No one would disagree with Amnesty when it “demanded the
prosecution of rape committed as a weapon or war and called for an
end to female genital mutilation.” Few would disagree with AI when
it opposed abortion for the purpose of sex selection, which usually
means killing female babies.
But in April the nine-member executive board decided that
“Sexual and Reproductive Rights” would include “support for
abortion.” As Ryan T. Anderson, a junior fellow at First
Things and assistant director at the Witherspoon Institute in
Princeton, discovered when he moved beyond the public
website to the members-only section, the new policy expressed
support for abortion access “in what they claim will only be
‘particular circumstances’” and for eliminating “all penalties
against women seeking abortions and against abortion
providers.”
AI insisted that it was taking “no position on whether abortion
is right or wrong, nor on whether or not abortion should be legal.”
But that was manifestly untrue. Amnesty formally focused its
attention on the traditional exceptions of rape, sexual assault,
incest, threat to mother’s life or “grave risk to her health.” But
the health exception has come to swallow the whole. As Anderson
pointed out, “If you doubt this, just look at the way
Roe’s health exception and Doe’s broad definition
of the word have been used.
Moreover, because of the penalties enacted, AI opposed the
federal ban on partial birth abortions, where a live baby is killed
in a particularly gruesome fashion. The organization dismissed the
right of health care professionals to avoid participating in
abortions for reasons of conscience, lest they interfere with the
right of those requesting abortions. Finally, Amnesty did not limit
the cases in which it sought “the removal of all criminal penalties
(including imprisonment, fines, and other punishments) against
those seeking, obtaining, providing information about, or carrying
out abortions.” These penalties, contended AI, are “a violation of
women’s reproductive rights.”
The result is full-scale, across-the-board legalization. At
most, “states may properly ensure that medical practitioners are
licensed, may provide other protection against malpractice, and may
set reasonable gestational limits,” said Amnesty. Ironically, by
insisting that no one can be punished for violating even a
supposedly valid law, AI obviated its formal opposition to
sex-selective abortions.
ORGANIZATION OFFICIALS RECOGNIZED that the policy would be
controversial, so they even sought to keep the membership quiet.
Anderson pointed to the letter from Karen Schneider, chair of the
Sexual and Reproductive Rights Working Group, which explained that
“It is very important to be aware of the following: This policy
will not be made public at this time. As the [International
Executive Committee] has written to all sections, ‘There is to be
no proactive external publication of the policy position or of the
fact of its adoption issued. This means no section or structure is
to issue a press release or public statement or external
communication of any kind on the policy decision.”
Materials were prepared in case the news slipped out, and
critical articles or letters appeared. Volunteers were told to send
questioners to AI communications personnel. The organization
prevented critics from passing out leaflets at its national
conference. “There’s simply no reason for us to publicize policy
issues,” Widney Brown, of Amnesty’s International Secretariat,
later told Reuters.
Even after AI’s policy switch became public, its staff attempted
to obfuscate the issue. In June Kate Gilmore, Executive Deputy
Secretary General, stated 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.” But, in fact, the
organization called for ending penalties in all circumstances.
Some pro-life Amnesty supporters hoped that the 400-member
International Council would overturn the abortion policy when the
group met in Mexico City in mid-August. But it was not to be. AI
officially announced that the Council “affirmed the organization’s
policy” on abortion.
OBVIOUSLY, THE ISSUE OF ABORTION is difficult and controversial.
But a group that purports to be concerned with human rights cannot
evade the issue of the unborn by claiming to take no position on
when life begins. By effectively supporting the right to abortion
up to the moment of birth, AI has decided that the unborn — the
most vulnerable and the most helpless in our society — do not
count morally in any way at any point.
Moreover, the organization makes much of its efforts “to stop
violence against women.” Indeed, without apparent irony, in
justifying its position to religious believers AI “calls on its
members and supporters to work with the organization to end
violence against women, which often lies at the root of many
unwanted pregnancies.” Yet is there a greater act of violence than
abortion itself? And when the baby is female, is not the violence
directed against women?
By becoming an advocate of abortion, AI has done more than
abandon the unborn who so need an outside advocate. Amnesty also
has damaged its own credibility, undercutting its larger mission to
aid prisoners of conscience and other victims of state violence and
oppression around the globe. As Ryan Anderson notes, “The
organization’s leadership deludes itself if it thinks its new
support for an unlimited abortion license doesn’t undermine the
solidarity once enjoyed among all those working to end human
suffering.”
AI has sacrificed its reputation as a nonpartisan human rights
group. It also has made it difficult for some of its most obvious
allies — religious activists committed to the life and dignity of
all human beings — to back AI’s work.
Ironically, Amnesty was created by a Catholic layman, Peter
Benenson. But the organization now has made it particularly
difficult for Catholics to support AI’s work. The Vatican has urged
Catholics to stop providing financial support to Amnesty, and
several leading Catholics have resigned as members from the
organization. Losses are likely to extend to evangelicals and
perhaps beyond.
I’m sorry, Mr. Cox, but I can’t send Amnesty International money
any longer. I admire your organization and its work. But I believe
there is no more fundamental human right than the right to life.
And no one more needs protection from violence than the unborn.
It’s unfortunate that an otherwise worthy group like AI is
unwilling to defend human life in all of its forms.
Doug Bandow is vice president for policy at Citizen
Outreach. A former special assistant to President Ronald Reagan, he
is the author of Foreign Follies: America’s New Global Empire
(Xulon Press).
