Church in the World

Amnesty ?losing ability to distinguish human rights?

Australia

CHRISTIANS WOULD be compelled to resign membership from Amnesty International if it accepted that abortion was a human right, Cardinal George Pell has warned, saying the humanitarian organisation was "on the brink of working for a universal right to kill".

The Archbishop of Sydney said that the notion of human rights had become so twisted that the claim that every woman had the right to abort her baby was "double-speak at its best".

"Amnesty now has 1.8 million members around the world but any decision that a woman's rights to physical and mental integrity include her right to terminate her pregnancy will mean that gospel Christians in every mainline denomination will be compelled to resign," the cardinal wrote in his weekly column in Sydney's Sunday Telegraph. "Much of the group's energy and enthusiasm will be drained from it."

Noting that the organisation was founded in 1961 by a Catholic, Peter Benenson, Cardinal Pell said it was a "tragedy" that after 45 years Amnesty risked "losing its capacity to distinguish a genuine human right from a totally bogus claim".

Cardinal Pell wrote that a woman's reproductive right to choose could not suppress the more basic human right to life itself, citing Article 3 of the United Nations Declaration of Human Rights, which proclaims that everyone has the right to life, liberty and security of person.

He praised Amnesty's record, but warned that the UN declaration was now under threat.

"Formerly, Amnesty had a neutral position on abortion because there was no generally accepted right to abortion in international human rights law."

Cardinal Pell wrote that New Zealand and Britain had adopted pro-abortion positions, with Amnesty's Australian branch due to vote within days.

The cardinal noted that in every country where Amnesty's intentions had been made public, Christian leaders had objected strongly. Amnesty had gone "particularly quiet" in the United States because pro-life awareness and sympathies were more developed there.

"Pope John Paul II said that an inability to distinguish good from evil is the most dangerous crisis which can [affect] man," Cardinal Pell wrote.

"Let us hope there will be sufficient clear-minded humanitarians in Australia, and throughout the world, to prevent Amnesty making a terrible mistake and betraying its origins."