Amnesty could kill itself

Wednesday, 24th May 2006

The danger of making abortion a ‘human right’

Because such rights have their origins in the philosophical concept of natural law, there was no mention of sexual and reproductive rights in the Declaration. Instead, all men and women have the right to live peaceful lives free from the fear of oppression or persecution, regardless of their sexual orientation. Nor does the ‘right to choose’ somehow supersede the most fundamental of all human rights: that of each and every person to life itself, a right recognised in Article 3 of the Declaration which proclaims that ‘everyone has the right to life, liberty and security of person’.

The prevailing confusion between good and evil, which Pope John Paul II described as the ‘most dangerous crisis which can afflict man’, and which is so manifest in the West’s contemporary understanding of human rights, can be linked in part to the widespread rejection of the natural law, the tacit acceptance of which was the very foundation of the Universal Declaration, and of Amnesty International.

It is a profound irony that in the name of ‘rights’ Amnesty should align itself with the destruction of the international consensus on how those rights are understood. The Universal Declaration is now, in effect, dead, its currency devalued by the very organisations that are supposed to uphold its principles. As a result, people are no longer taking human rights seriously. For that, Amnesty International will, in time, share much of the blame.