Amnesty International has started a campaign to legalise abortion in Ireland. They’ve launched it with an ad voiced by Liam Neeson, famous for playing Hannibal in The A-Team (well, we’ve all got bills to pay), writes Tim Stanley in the Daily Telegraph.

We are in a very sad place when an organisation which was founded for the protection of people denied freedom and persecuted because of their beliefs is now campaigning for the destruction of millions of unborn human beings awaiting release into this world.

Stanley continues, referring to the Amnesty/Neeson video:

Its visuals tell you everything you need to know about the true motivations behind this secular crusade. Creepy music plays as the camera pans overs a deserted church. “A ghost haunts Ireland,” says Liam. “A cruel ghost of the last century… It blindly brings suffering, even death, to the women whose lives it touches.”

This doesn’t look like a campaign against Ireland’s abortion laws. It looks like a campaign to exorcise the Catholic Church from Ireland. Which is highly ironic because the liberals behind it are exactly the kind of people who always insist that religion should be kept out of politics. On this occasion, however, they’re very happy to play the faith card.
In their ad they don’t quote statistics or talk about health or show a single image of a woman. No, they focus straightforwardly on the ghastly, nasty Catholic Church. Boo. Hiss.

Their overriding concern appears social rather than medical. They probably want to drive the last remnant of religious influence from Irish public life. They likely believe that things started well with the legalisation of gay marriage and that now they can move smoothly on to the legalisation of abortion.

Never mind that the two are far from synonymous. On the contrary, one can be pro-gay marriage, or gay, and very concerned about introducing abortion on demand. One can be atheist and pro-life, as the writer Christopher Hitchens sort of was. But never mind all of those nuances, because Amnesty has leapt upon a simple formula: Ireland – abortion = a non-Catholic country. And I sense that’s what fuels this angry crusade.

Amnesty looks like it is exploiting the tragedies of people like the Linehans (see Stanley’s full article) for the sake of a political campaign against the Catholic Church

There are two tragedies here. First, that they are ruining a genuine, serious, science-rooted debate that could be had about the ethics of abortion. They look like they are exploiting the tragedies of people like the Linehans for the sake of a political campaign against a Church that is already dying in influence.

Second, they are destroying the reputation of Amnesty International itself. Amnesty was established by deeply religious people with the goal of preserving the lives of the oppressed and unrepresented. If anything, Amnesty ought to be pro-life.

Until now most of us have associated the face of Neeson with mayhem and murder – but of the fictional kind. From now on it will be hard to look at his face or hear his voice without associating it with the mayhem and murder we associate with the name of Kermit Gosnel.

As for Amnesty International – or is it now Abortion International – not another cent, dime or penny into its coffers.