Sir, – The Amnesty International report, which calls for the repeal of the Eighth Amendment to the Constitution (which recognises the equal right to life of mother and baby) and for the decriminalisation of abortion, is further proof that the organisation is no longer a human rights defender ("Ireland's law on abortion violates human rights, says Amnesty secretary general", June 9th).
Article 3 of the Universal Declaration of Human Rights states: “Everyone has the right to life, liberty and security of person.” Abortion is a violation of human rights because it involves the direct and deliberate taking of an innocent human life. The right to life is the most basic and important human right, for without it all other rights are meaningless.
Amnesty International would better serve humanity in general, and women’s rights in particular, if it worked to ensure that the right to life of all human beings, both born and unborn, is upheld under national and international law. – Yours, etc,
MARY O’BYRNE,
Galway.
Sir, – David Clarke (June 11th) is right to be concerned about "mission creep" in NGOs. It appears to me that many NGOs are attempting to act as political parties without getting their hands dirty with the unseemly compromises involved in politics. It is no surprise that many failed and frustrated politicians end up in this sector on rather large salaries.
Any NGO in receipt of public funds should be obliged to spend all of its money on core non-partisan objectives, otherwise public money will effectively be spent on referendum campaigning. – Yours, etc,
MATTHEW GLOVER,
Lucan, Co Dublin.
A chara, – The Irish Times is to be commended on its editorial "Amnesty report and the case for repeal of the Eighth Amendment of the Constitution" (June 11th) pointing out Amnesty's erroneous claims that abortion is a human right and that Ireland's laws are consequently in breach of international law. There is no "human right" to abortion, as even a casual reading of the UN's Universal Declaration of Human Rights will confirm. There is, however, a right to life.
Amnesty might well do better to concentrate on defending people in cases where actual rights have been abused, rather than inventing new rights and attempting to foist them on Ireland and the world. – Is mise,
Rev PATRICK G BURKE,
Castlecomer, Co Kilkenny.
Sir, – Your Editorial is correct to query the claim made by Amnesty International that a legal obligation exists for Ireland to repeal the Eight Amendment and liberalise the availability of abortion. No such obligation exists under any international treaty or as a matter of human rights law. On the contrary, the United Nations Convention on the Rights of the Child specifically protects the unborn saying that children should enjoy “legal protection, before as well as after birth”.
Likewise, the UN Convention on Civil and Political Rights states that “every human being has the inherent right to life”, with no distinction made between born and unborn life, and goes on to say that “sentence of death shall not be imposed for crimes committed by persons below eighteen years of age, and shall not be carried out on pregnant women”. This clearly gives the unborn child a status which is separate from its mother and equates it with all other children under the age of majority, according them the same right to life, or rather, the right not to have their lives arbitrarily ended.
Surely these unambiguous statements should prompt Amnesty to take a view that Ireland has an international obligation to maintain, and not abolish, our legal and constitutional protection of the right to life of the unborn. Similarly the European Convention on Human Rights contains no right to an abortion and in fact it has recently been argued that legal provision for abortion on demand is a breach of the convention, since it the right to life of an unborn child can be ended without any proportionate justification, such as the risk to the life of the mother.
The European Court of Human Rights has also consistently said that abortion and the right to life are matters for the sole consideration of each individual state, so long as legal clarity existed on the subjects.
The word “abortion” does not appear even once in any international treaty, convention or declaration, and yet Amnesty International continues to campaign vigorously that access to abortion is a fundamental human right. For an organisation that supposedly defends human rights, and claims on its website to be “independent of any political ideology”, this is a truly extraordinary position. – Yours, etc,
BARRY WALSH,
Clontarf,Dublin 3.
Sir, – David Clarke asks if people would baulk at Amnesty’s “wider interpretation of human rights” referring to gay marriage and abortion. Amnesty does not “interpret” human rights; it puts the human being at the centre of everything it does. The organisation would be the first to say it has not reached all its goals but it has achieved a huge amount. At least it is trying. – Yours, etc,
EDNA McMINN,
Belfast.
Sir, – If your letter-writers find irony or mission creep in Amnesty International’s campaign calling for decriminalisation of abortion, perhaps they should reflect on the nature of human rights, which, yes, does include women’s rights, and no, does not include the right of an embryo to progress to full term regardless of the impact on the pregnant woman’s mental health, autonomy and self-determination. It never ceases to amaze me how people who are against abortion are unflinchingly certain that they are right, and that human rights organisations, international courts of law, medical professionals – and of course the women who are the true experts on themselves, their bodies and their lives – are wrong. – Yours, etc,
WILSON JOYCE,
Cambridge.