VATICAN CITY: The Roman Catholic Church said on Wednesday it was suspending financial aid to the human rights group Amnesty International, accusing it of having decided to support abortion.

“No more Catholic financing of Amnesty International after the organisation's pro-abortion about-turn,” said a statement from the Vatican's Pontifical Council for Justice and Peace.

The council's president Renato Martino said the move was the “inevitable consequence” of a recent decision by Amnesty's executive council to support access to abortion for women who had been raped or whose health was endangered by their pregnancy.“Thanks be to God, there is no internationally-recognised right to abortion,” Martino said.

But he attacked “the pro-abortion pressure groups which continue their propaganda in the framework of what (the late Pope) John Paul II called 'the culture of death'.

“It is extremely worrying that an organisation as worthy as Amnesty International bends to the pressures of these groups,” he said. The Vatican statement reproduces statements by Martino on the US Internet site National Catholic Report.

The site also quotes Widney Brown, one of the heads of Amnesty International, who pointed out that 68,000 women die each year from backstreet abortions.—AFP