Amnesty Int’l: Anti-Abortion Laws ‘Tantamount to Torture’

amnesty international
Thomas D. Williams, Ph.D.

In the ongoing crusade by the abortion lobby to exploit the Zika crisis to pressure Latin American countries to relax their abortion laws, Amnesty International has taken the hyperbole to new heights, comparing El Salvador’s abortion laws to “torture and other forms of ill treatment.”

Early Thursday, Amnesty tweeted that “El Salvador’s harmful abortion ban is putting the lives of women at risk,” linking to a heavy-handed article that tells gruesome tales of mistreatment of women who are suspected of having had abortions.

The article claims that El Salvador’s abortion law “violates the human rights of thousands of women and girls,” suggesting that according to the rights group, abortion constitutes a fundamental human right.

“The ban denies women and girls the autonomy to make decisions regarding their own sexual and reproductive health,” the piece states, aping the rhetoric of Planned Parenthood. “It also endangers the lives of women and girls.”

The group mischaracterizes abortion—the intentional termination of the life of a fetus within its mother’s womb—as a therapeutic intervention for the benefit of the mother.

Forcing women to carry their pregnancies to term is, “according to the United Nations Special Rapporteur on Torture, tantamount to torture and other forms of ill-treatment,” the group argues.

Though the article offers no statistical data, it asserts that El Salvador’s law “causes women and girls to seek unsafe, clandestine abortions that frequently result in serious medical complications” and that if complications occur, “women and girls are afraid to seek medical help for fear that they will be arrested for violating the abortion ban.”

The piece further cites Denis Muñoz, an attorney for the Citizen Association for the Legalization of Abortion, who described the climate created by the abortion ban as a “witch hunt against poor women.”

Amnesty International has joined Planned Parenthood and other abortion advocates in bringing all its international power to bear on El Salvador, publishing a 63-page report on its abortion laws and demonizing politicians who support the right to life of the unborn.

In its crusade to end human rights abuses throughout the world, however, Amnesty International chooses to turn a blind eye to the most underrepresented victims of rights violations: the millions of children aborted every year throughout the world.

Their activism would be much more convincing if they were to include all human beings in their campaigns, especially those with no voice of their own.

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