“Their publicity makes it seem as if they want abortions solely where the baby is going to die,” he said. “If you dig deeper you discover that they want to ‘Repeal Article 40.3.3 of the Irish Constitution to remove the protection of the right to life of the foetus’. These are their words, not mine.”
Amnesty’s ‘Repeal the 8th’ video portrays Ireland utilising ghostly black and white imagery of a ruined church and graveyard together with a voiceover from actor Liam Neeson who tells the viewer that a “cruel ghost of the last century haunts Ireland…written in the Constitution…a shadow of the country we’d hoped we’d left behind”. The ad culminates in a fade to full colour and the message “Repeal the 8th”.
Stating his belief that Amnesty’s founder, the late Peter Benenson, a Catholic, would probably disassociate himself from the organisation based on its abortion campaigning, Lord Alton insisted that Amnesty International was not established “to take away the protection of the right to life of an unborn child”.
Lord Alton’s criticism of Amnesty has been backed by Dr Peter Saunders, CEO of the Christian Medical Fellowship, who pointed out that Amnesty International now “perversely campaigns for a human right to end human lives. Specifically the most vulnerable of all: unborn children”.
