On Thursday, pro-abortion group Amnesty International sent a tweet criticizing El Salvador for the nation’s abortion ban.
#ElSalvador's harmful #abortion ban is putting the lives of women at risk. https://t.co/BbnwtJstnR pic.twitter.com/Q9YKDvHZaJ
— AmnestyInternational (@amnesty) February 18, 2016
The article linked in the tweet argues against the abortion ban, claiming it “violates the human rights of thousands of women and girls.” Arguments presented against the abortion ban include an example of a woman who was allegedly jailed for homicide after giving birth to a stillborn baby – as if an example of horrible enforcement of the law somehow proves the abortion ban itself is to blame.
The article goes on to compare abortion bans to torture…
In addition to endangering women’s and girls’ lives, forcing rape and incest survivors—some as young as 9—to carry out pregnancies is, according to the United Nations Special Rapporteur on Torture, tantamount to torture and other forms of ill-treatment.
In 2014, the country’s health minister even tried to blame El Salvadoran teen suicides on the country’s abortion ban. Instead of addressing El Salvador’s high rate of child molestation and rape in a culture which frequently punishes the victim rather than the perpetrator, abortion is frequently touted as the (completely backward) solution to helping women and minor girls. Amnesty International ignores the root of the problem, refusing to focus on stopping and punishing the offenders and changing a culture that preys on young girls.
Online for Life explains what abortion actually says about a society:
Abortion proves that society is failing women. It argues that a woman’s freedom is found in her ability to kill her own. But there is no freedom found in the oppression or termination of another.
Amnesty International describes itself as “a global movement of more than 7 million people who take injustice personally. We are campaigning for a world where human rights are enjoyed by all.” But in its efforts to destroy human rights abuses throughout the world, Amnesty International seems to have forgotten the most basic human right: life. They seem to have failed to include the most helpless among us in the phrase, “human rights enjoyed by all.”
Campaigning for legalized killing of preborn babies will not accomplish the goal of ending abuse and suffering.
