Ever since the Catholic Peter Benenson founded Amnesty International in 1961, the story of the pressure group has been one of heartbreak. While the group, now with 1.8 million members around the world, has been hugely successful in highlighting the plight of prisoners of conscience and helping to free some of them, its existence has not stemmed the tide of those persecuted for their beliefs by governments, despots and dictators. No wonder, then, that Michael Evans, Bishop of East Anglia, has said that the world needs Amnesty International.

But the decision to change its stance on abortion, following a meeting of its leadership council in Mexico, is heartbreaking in a different way for its many Catholic supporters, both individuals and organisations such as Pax Christi and Sant'Egidio, that have worked alongside it for years. Despite protests during the last year over the proposed change of policy, the Mexico decision finally makes official the departure from Amnesty's long-standing neutral position on abortion.

This is not the first time that Amnesty has moved away from its original focus on the plight of prisoners of conscience. Indeed some members and organisations have backed this expansion; Sant'Egidio, for example, supported its campaign against the death penalty. Its new position on abortion follows Amnesty's decision to focus on the prevention of violence against women as an area of major concern and Catholics have, for example, supported its campaigning against rape. But there has been the inevitable worry that the expansion of purpose dilutes the impact the organisation has.

Under its new policy, confirmed in Mexico, Amnesty has gone much further. While Catholics may understand the desire to help women thrown into prison for having abortions, the notion that abortion is a human right, as Amnesty is now advocating, they would find impossible to support. It also appears to contradict Article Three of the Universal Declaration of Human Rights, ...

The economic progress - and rivalry - of India and China will shape the first half of the twenty-first century. The contrast between them is not just economic but also political and ideological. India is a plural secular democracy, China a one-party state - two experiments in how to structure the very fabric of a nation's life. Saluting India on the sixtieth anniversary of independence from Britain is a good moment ...