The head of the country's largest Catholic pro-life group is accusing Amnesty International of joining the abortion lobby and "throwing the right to life out the window."

Amnesty International, founded by Catholic layman Peter Benenson in 1961, has ignored the concerns of pro-life activists and decided to abandon its neutral position on abortion. The human rights group acknowledges on its website that its position on "sɛҳuąƖ and reproductive rights" now "includes support for abortion."

Frank Pavone, national director of Priests for Life, calls the move a "tragic mistake" that "undermines all the other good" that Amnesty is trying to accomplish.

"If we say that we stand for human rights of any kind, that whole effort rests on recognizing the right to life," Pavone contends. And the right to life, he continues, is the "foundation and source" of every other right. "After all," he says, "you can't have the right to healthcare, for example, or even to a peaceful environment if you're not alive."

Pavone predicts Amnesty, because of this move, will lose a great deal of support from its faith-based constituency.

"The tragedy of abortion, the violence of abortion is so hidden," says the Priests for Life leader, "and we simply have to keep exposing that in terms of the visual imagery of what abortion does to the baby -- and the harm it does to women, which is coming out more and more as women and men alike speak about the pain of having had their child killed by this procedure."

The pro-life advocate contends that as similar evidence about the effects of abortion continues to come to light, "more and more people will see that Amnesty [International] has made a big mistake here."

Pavone notes that Planned Parenthood's work to elevate the supposed "right to abortion" to the status of a "human right" has been part and parcel of its efforts at the United Nations for years.

Congressman Chris Smith (R-New Jersey), a Capitol Hill pro-life advocate, told Catholic News Service last summer that he hoped Amnesty would reject the move to support abortion. Otherwise, he said, they would "cease to be a human rights organization and morph into just another anti-child, pro-abortion organization." In November, he and 73 other members of Congress sent a letter to Amnesty, urging the group to maintain its abortion neutral position or adopt a pro-life stance.