Why Catholics should support Amnesty over abortion

13 comments from readers

ChrisN
25 September 2007 at 09:09

It's puzzling why the bishops and cardinals who line up to attack abortion never refer to the Bible's most relevant passage on this issue.

Exodus 21:22 clearly states that whilst causing the death of a pregnant woman is murder, the loss of an unborn child is a purely civil matter for which compensation should be paid to the woman's husband.

The Catholic Church would rather attack vulnerable women with emotional rhetoric than consider the complexities of the abortion issue and the clear distinction the Bible draws between women and the unborn.

kdawg78
25 September 2007 at 15:31

Keep in mind that when you deny a person the right to life, you deny him/her all other human rights AI--the same rights AI is fighting so hard to maintain. AI's new policy is promoting the killings of human life. It is not just in rare causes since they promoting abortion in cases of a woman's "health" (which creates a loop hole of abortion on demand). AI has lost all credibility to speak out against any human rights abuses when they are promoting the biggest abuse of all--the deliberate killing of innocent and helpless life...a child.

J Green
25 September 2007 at 16:36

eh, "This consensual approach is far more likely to win the hearts and votes than the threatening punitive actions." comes after ""The conscience must be guided by the Church's teachings," said Bishop Longley."

How is indoctrination of the conscience a more consensual approach! That makes a mockery of the freedom of conscience. Typically monotheistic logic at work here I suspect. People should seriously ask questions about the adoption of nice warming words like faith to represent such obvious attempts at power play.

mike
25 September 2007 at 17:37

"Exodus 21:22 clearly states that whilst causing the death of a pregnant woman is murder, the loss of an unborn child is a purely civil matter for which compensation should be paid to the woman's husband. "

This is a horribly paraphrased and out of context quotation from scripture. The NAB translation is "When MEN have a fight and hurt a pregnant woman, so that she suffers a miscarrriage" which is not direct abortion but an "accidental" micarriage, even though the miscarriage was caused by violence. The Catholic Church is very considerate of this difference of intent.

We Catholics are distancing ourselves from AI because AI has distanced itself from the Catholic Church.

ChrisN
25 September 2007 at 17:56

mike: Exodus 21:22 clearly makes a distinction between the life of the foetus and the life of an adult women - it doesn't matter how the loss occurs.

Jen R
25 September 2007 at 20:36

"They continue - despite repeated denials - to promote the view that the new policy position amounts to campaigning to promote abortion on demand. This is not the case and such misinformation does not help anyone come to an informed and rational position on the question."

Amnesty's own internal documents show that this is exactly what the new policy position amounts to: http://www.turntheclockforward.org/2007/09/amnestys-own-word...

They just deny it in public.

catholiccourage.com
26 September 2007 at 00:25

Christians and other people of goodwill provide a nearly limitless stream of services to women facing an unexpected pregnancy. The truth is that bringing offspring to adulthood is a challenging task and it's most uncertain before the child is born. Allowing the intentional killing of the unborn because one is faced with fears (irrational or not), is not the rational position of a caring society. The appropriate stance as a society is to denounce as firmly as possible such destructive actions. (http://www.catholiccourage.com)

msallen
26 September 2007 at 07:50

Seeing other commenters here arguing about the interpretation of a verse from the bible depresses me greatly. It is adherence to nonsense like this that has caused the current situation. I joined AI for the first time a while back in response to the Catholic Church's blackmailing stance on this, and what is one of the first things I hear - that Catholics will be able to ring fence their future contributions. Does that mean that BNP members will be able to ring fence theirs so as not to help non-whites? That of course wold be ridiculous wouldn't it.

chris middleton
26 September 2007 at 08:20

It is with regret that I confirm that St Aloysius’ College in Sydney has severed its association with Amnesty International.

Many people will argue that we should remain inside Amnesty, because of the overwhelming good that it does. Indeed, some of the strongest proponents of the change are counting on this sentiment. What is different about abortion, unlike, for example, promotion of gay rights, is that this policy explicitly excludes some of the most vulnerable members of society – the ‘unborn human’ – from its campaigns for human rights. To my mind this goes right to the core of Amnesty as a human rights organisation and as a body that gives primacy to conscience. It strikes against the United Nations Declaration on the Rights of the Child which states that every child “needs special safeguards and care, including legal protection, before as well as after birth.” This is surely a crossing of the Rubicon, a qualitative difference to other points of disagreement within an organization. Consequently, we feel we have no choice but to leave Amnesty.

Amnesty has weakened itself by becoming exclusive in a way that will harm its work. Amnesty has had an almost unique position in the depth of its membership in being able to attract conservative and liberal, religious and secular support, for issues around freedom of conscience and political rights. Its decision means that for many people of faith, membership will no longer be possible. The big tent that is Amnesty has become smaller and it runs the risk of becoming just another secular left voice. Amnesty is not a Catholic or religious organization. We were not seeking to impose a Catholic line on Amnesty nor to demonise others. Some 500 Australian Catholic schools have Amnesty groups - schools pay teachers to mentor such groups, Religious Studies textbooks often encourage membership in Amnesty and provide links to Amnesty on the internet. These groups help raise funds for Amnesty. All that could end now - and for what advantage?

We reject any attempt to see the promotion of human rights as a purely secular project. In my correspondence with Amnesty their spokesperson, Ms Rosenman, has asserted that Amnesty respects the right of Catholics to hold their views on abortion but she goes on to say that Amnesty is not a religious organization and that “the project of human rights is a secular one”. Now there is a world of difference between correctly saying that Amnesty is not a religious organization and claiming that the work for human rights is a secular one.

Peter Benenson’s own project in starting Amnesty was influenced by his religious experience. The first Amnesty campaign in 1961 highlighted the fate of six prisoners of conscience: Angolan anti- colonialist poet and resistance leader, Agostinho Neto; the Greek Communist Toni Ambatielos; Archbishop Josef Beran of Prague and Cardinal Jozsef Mindszenty of Budapest, both imprisoned by Communist dictatorships; Reverend Ashton Jones, a campaigner for the rights for blacks in the US; and the Romanian philosopher, Constantin Noica.

Later in his life Benenson founded the Association of Christians Against Torture. In his history of Amnesty, Keepers of the Flame, Stephen Hopgood writes that “The Amnesty movement was to be a spiritual awakening that would stimulate moral change in members own societies as well” (p.57). It is striking how many of the key early figures of Amnesty had strong religious connections – Quaker, Jewish, Protestant and Catholic. Far from being a secular project one could argue that Amnesty itself has its origins in the religious commitment to justice. It seems that increasingly our society is developing collective amnesia about the influence people of faith have had in shaping much of our modern world.

Here at Aloysius we are determined not to abdicate a role for our students in promoting human rights.

We will establish a society here at the College that will allow our students to continue to have an involvement in the promotion of human rights through the raising of awareness of violations of these rights and through lobbying of governments for prisoners of conscience, the end of torture and the death penalty, and the rights of all to basic freedoms. The society will not be a specifically religious or Catholic body, and will maintain a policy of neutrality on abortion.

The society will be called the Benenson Society, after Peter Benenson, the Catholic lawyer who founded Amnesty, and will hopefully embody something of the spirituality, as well as idealism, that led to the formation of Amnesty. The Benenson Society will have as its symbol a stylised white rose. This symbol draws inspiration from the White Rose Society, a group of Catholic and Protestant students and teachers at Munich University, who opposed Nazism with letters and pamphlets, with nine paying the ultimate price of being guillotined for their stand for human rights. A film about one of its members, Sophie Scholl, was released recently. Already schools from Sydney and Melbourne have expressed interest in the project, and it may well be a model that many school groups could follow.

I have indicated to Amnesty that if they wish we would be happy to cooperate in particular campaigns. We would seek to look for other organisations also to work with, such as Consistent Life, a network of over 200 organizations that oppose war, abortion, the death penalty, euthanasia, poverty and the death penalty.

Chris Middleton SJ

Jesurgislac
26 September 2007 at 14:37

There is rank illogic in the claim that, if a fetus is a human being, abortion ought to be illegal and is immoral - which is the logic by which so many people defend the Catholic Church's position. It does not matter when the process of pregnancy a fetus is deemed to be a human being: human rights do not include the right to use *another* human being against her will. Therefore, it will always be a basic human right for a pregnant woman to decide whether to terminate or continue her pregnancy.

If Catholics believe sincerely that they cannot support raped and abused women to have the right to decide to terminate a pregnancy that is the result of rape, then they should indeed leave Amnesty International, but ideally without making the monstrous argument that they are doing so because of the fetus's human rights: that would be an argument that pregnant woman are not human.

candygurl89
28 September 2007 at 21:31

i believe that abortion is wrong, period. who says that anyone has the right to say whether you live or die. Only God can choose that. It is wrong to deny someone the privilage of life.

gnuneo
04 October 2007 at 10:59

it is largely inevitable that a human rights org will turn to secular values - and also pro-choice - when it reaches a certain size, and goes global.

both pro-life and pro-choice positions are moral ones, one looks to the 'right of life of the unborn child', and the other 'right of choice for the woman', both of course claim that the other is "immoral".

the simple balancing argument, that it IS up to the individual woman to make this choice, but a moral society should endeavour to the best of its abilities to ensure that the society and environment is as supportive as possible for mothers with children (with or without husbands), which would ensure that there were as few abortions as possible.

instead, we find the 'dominator' effect, of (largely men) producing laws to take away this right of women, barely a step removed from archaic notions of the woman as merely a child-bearer, or even 'Kinder, Kircher, Kuche', a meme that is being slowly eradicated much like other global diseases that hinder our societies, like polio, or 'divine right to rule'.

it is a pity that catholics, and christians in general, do not see the moral path is pro-choice, and work to making a better society, rather than once again going down the path of Laws and intolerance.

and to cut the aid to AI, is just stupid.

Rachel
15 September 2008 at 18:03

I do not think any of you who have taken away your support of Amnesty International do a damn thing to help women who are raped or become pregnant due to abuse by a family member. That is called hypocricy. Spend your time DOING something instead of pointing fingers. It's disgusting. These women have been hurt and humiliated. You should be ashamed of yourselves.