# Irish Amnesty plays safe after boycott call

- Link: https://fundraising.co.uk/2007/06/17/irish-amnesty-plays-safe-after-boycott-call/
- Published: 2007-06-17T23:00:00+01:00
- Author: Howard Lake

Amnesty’s Irish section is staying neutral on the issue of abortion after the Vatican
called on Catholics to withdraw their support for the organisation over its support
for abortion in certain circumstances. Amnesty raised over ‚€1.6 million in Ireland
in 2004.

Roman Catholics have been advised to stop donating to the human rights group and
the Vatican has announced that it is suspending all financial aid to Amnesty. The
human rights organisation decided in April to involve itself in issues relating 
to abortion ‘to the extent that they are directly linked to the right to health 
and against violence against women’.

As a result it has called for an end to the penalisation of women who have an abortion.
Vatican Justice Minister Cardinal Renato Martino said that by taking its new stand
on abortion, Amnesty had ‘disqualified itself as a defender of human rights’.

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Responding, Amnesty said it was not promoting abortion as a universal right, but
that women had a right to choose, particularly in cases of rape or incest. Amnesty’s
Deputy Secretary-General Kate Gilmore severely criticised what she said was a ‘misrepresented
account’ of the organisation’s position.

She said: ‘If Cardinal Martino had been in Darfur and stood between rape victims
as stones were being thrown at them, he would not talk again about whether or not
Amnesty has the integrity to stand firm for human rights’.

However, the Irish Section of Amnesty International has said it will not be implementing
the organisation’s new policy. It was agreed that national sections of Amnesty could
interpret the new policy in accordance with their own context.

In 1996 the Catholic Church took a similar measure in cutting off aid to the UN 
children’s fund UNICEF. UNICEF was distributing a post-intercourse spermicide in
refugee camps to teenage girls who had been raped.

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