A British woman who owes the release of her father from prison in Malta in the 1970s to Amnesty International has decided to suspend her support because of group's pro-abortion agenda.

Fiorella Nash worked with the NGO until it decided two years ago to move from neutrality on the issue of abortion to support for the procedure.  Ms Nash, who works for the Society for the Protection of the Unborn Child in the UK, said, “My family owes a huge debt to Amnesty International.  When my father was imprisoned in Malta during the Mintoff government, they saved his life.  For years and years, we supported their work, rattling tins in street collections in the rain, and organising fund-raising events.

“But now Amnesty has betrayed its beliefs.  It’s not just that the policy on abortion has changed – it’s the way it was done.  Only pro-abortion material was circulated and, at the meeting in London, all the speakers were pro-abortion.  There was no attempt at a fair debate."

Since its founding by Catholic British lawyer Peter Benenson, Amnesty has been one of the human rights groups that was most supported by Catholic and Protestant believers in the United Kingdom.  When August 2007 rolled around, Amnesty raised the ire of some of its strongest supporters by revealing its intention to campaign for access to abortion.  The decision to move from not having a position on abortion to campaigning for it led  bishops and lay people around the world to withdraw their membership from the organisation, calling the abortion agenda a betrayal of the group's founding principles.

Amnesty has focused a recent campaign on the government of Nicaragua, accusing it of being responsible for the deaths of pregnant adult and teen women because of its laws against abortion.  Nash was pregnant when Amnesty publicly revealed its pro-abortion slant.  “I was pregnant with my first son and I thought, ‘When my father was in a defenceless situation I helped him.  What am I doing now to help the equally defenceless unborn?’”