{"id":1846,"date":"2007-05-02T11:48:36","date_gmt":"2007-05-02T11:48:36","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/blog.beliefnet.com\/viamedia\/2007\/05\/dirty-little-secret.html"},"modified":"2007-05-02T11:48:36","modified_gmt":"2007-05-02T11:48:36","slug":"dirty-little-secret","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/viamedia\/2007\/05\/dirty-little-secret.html","title":{"rendered":"Dirty Little Secret"},"content":{"rendered":"

Ryan Anderson on Amnesty International:<\/a><\/p>\n

AI’s move to changing its policy on abortion has been murmured about for a while now. While looking through the group’s website, Anderson discovered that it’s a done deal and that AI is prepared:<\/p>\n

\n
\n

Karen Schneider, the chair of the Sexual and Reproductive Rights Working Group, posted a letter, \u201cUpdated April 20th, 2007,\u201d and addressed to volunteer leaders. Before I reveal the beginning, here\u2019s a bit of the ending:<\/p>\n

\n

It is very important to be aware of the following: This policy will not be made public at this time<\/strong>. As the IEC [Amnesty International\u2019s International Executive Committee] has written to all sections, \u201cThere is to be no proactive external publication of the policy position or of the fact of its adoption issued. This means no section or structure is to issue a press release or public statement or external communication of any kind on the policy decision.\u201d (emphasis original)<\/p>\n<\/blockquote>\n

Anticipating that news might get out anyway, the website contains links to four other documents\u2014a two-page overview of the new policy, a letter from the executive director explaining the change, and an already-written letter to the editor \u201cthat should be used only to respond to critical editorials or letters to the editor in local newspapers.\u201d Members were encouraged to circulate these documents to the public but only in response to prior attacks on Amnesty\u2019s new policy\u2014they\u2019d prefer not to generate any PR if possible, and do damage-control only if they have to. All the documents had the same tone a student takes who after being sent to the principal\u2019s office is then forced to talk with the secretary while awaiting his appointment\u2014defensive rationalizing at the service of cleansing the conscience.<\/p>\n

The fourth document, a FAQ, could only \u201cbe used to respond to inquiries, but not distributed to the public.\u201d Schneider ends by telling volunteers that they were not to \u201crespond to any inquiries from the news media\u201d but to direct reporters to the AI Communication Department.<\/p>\n

Why the preemptive cover-up? Why the anticipatory responses? A letter to the editor already drafted in response to negative stories that haven\u2019t even been written? An answer sheet to frequently asked questions before the new policy has even been announced and enough questions could be asked to generate frequency? Something\u2019s up.<\/p>\n

So, how did that letter begin? Schneider started with this: \u201cAmnesty International\u2019s International Executive Committee (IEC) has adopted a new position on Sexual and Reproductive Rights that includes support for abortion in very particular circumstances, in the context of our work to stop grave human rights abuses against women and girls.\u201d<\/p>\n

The new policy has three basic goals: (1) provide access to abortion in what they claim will only be \u201cparticular circumstances,\u201d (2) ensure that women have access to medical care after botched\u2014whether legal or illegal\u2014abortions, and (3) eliminate all penalties against women seeking abortions and against abortion providers<\/em>.<\/p>\n

The various supporting documents all stress the legitimate concerns of female health and liberty and the good work Amnesty International has done in the past on these issues\u2014but then argue for what will amount to an unlimited right to abortion. <\/p>\n

snip<\/em><\/p>\n

Amnesty International\u2019s new abortion policy will strain\u2014if not completely sever\u2014the close ties it enjoys with many of the staunchest defenders of human rights: religious believers, in particular, the Roman Catholic Church. Though they hope to preempt such a conclusion\u2014and gave their members just such a set of talking points\u2014they are only kidding themselves:<\/p>\n<\/blockquote>\n<\/blockquote>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Ryan Anderson on Amnesty International: AI’s move to changing its policy on abortion has been murmured about for a while now. While looking through the group’s website, Anderson discovered that it’s a done deal and that AI is prepared: Karen Schneider, the chair of the Sexual and Reproductive Rights Working Group, posted a letter, \u201cUpdated…<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":180,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[1],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-1846","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-news"],"yoast_head":"\nDirty Little Secret - Via Media<\/title>\n<meta name=\"robots\" content=\"index, follow, max-snippet:-1, max-image-preview:large, max-video-preview:-1\" \/>\n<link rel=\"canonical\" href=\"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/viamedia\/2007\/05\/dirty-little-secret.html\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:locale\" content=\"en_US\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:type\" content=\"article\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:title\" content=\"Dirty Little Secret - Via Media\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:description\" content=\"Ryan Anderson on Amnesty International: AI’s move to changing its policy on abortion has been murmured about for a while now. 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The Catholicism comes from her side. Amy grew up in a number of places - Indiana - Washington, DC - Lubbock Texas - Arlington, Virginia - DeKalb, Illinois - Lawrence, Kansas - and Knoxville, Tennessee, where the family settled in 1973. She attended Knoxville Catholic High School, then the University of Tennessee where she majored in history. She received an MA in Church History from Vanderbilt University, where she wrote a thesis on the changing role of women in 19th century American Protestantism, and the ways Scripture was used to justify those changes. She worked as as a teacher in Catholic high schools and a Parish Director of Religious Education and started writing for the diocesan press - the Florida Catholic - in 1988. Amy has written columns for Our Sunday Visitor and Catholic News Service at times over the past twenty years. Her articles have been published in venues ranging from Our Sunday Visitor to the New York Times to Commonweal. She has written 17 books. 18, if you included the as yet tragically unpublished novel. Amy has five children, ranging in age from 26 to 4 and was married to Michael Dubruiel, who died unexpectedly in February 2009. She lives in Birmingham, Alabama.","url":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/viamedia\/author\/awelborn"}]}},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/viamedia\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1846","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/viamedia\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/viamedia\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/viamedia\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/180"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/viamedia\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=1846"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/viamedia\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1846\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/viamedia\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=1846"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/viamedia\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=1846"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/viamedia\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=1846"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}