Amnesty International has come in for some bad press recently. Can a human-rights organization be taken seriously when its annual report dwells more on abuses in America and England than in Belarus and Saudi Arabia? When it rebukes Israel far more often than Iran, Libya, Syria, and Egypt? Or when it asks who has the worst human-rights record among Darth Vader, Hobgoblin, and Dick Cheney?

As disconcerting as these problems are, Amnesty International's most egregious recent offense almost went unreported--and the organization wanted to keep it that way. Hidden on the members-only section of its website was the announcement of a new policy that condemns as a human-rights violator any country that does not allow broad access to abortion or punishes abortion providers.

"This policy will not be made public at this time," the website instructed its visitors. "There is to be no proactive external publication of the policy position or of the fact of its adoption issued." Amnesty International officials had good reason to want to keep this new policy quiet: It undermines their voice as global human-rights advocates, and they know it.

Perhaps that's why Amnesty International had preemptive talking points posted on the site too. The news was to be kept secret--but if the story got out anyway, members were to respond immediately: "Some media reports and individuals have claimed that AI promotes a 'human right to abortion.' This grossly misrepresents AI's policy on sexual and reproductive rights. AI takes no position on whether abortion is right or wrong, nor on whether or not abortion should be legal."

Of course, that's not true. The new policy calls on governments to "ensure access to abortion services to any woman who becomes pregnant as the result of rape, sexual assault, or incest, or where a pregnancy poses a risk to a woman's life or a grave risk to her health." As the judicial history of abortion in the United States proves, the "health exemption" is an open invitation to unlimited abortion.

But, more directly, Amnesty International also calls for "the removal of all criminal penalties (including imprisonment, fines, and other punishments) against those seeking, obtaining, providing information about, or carrying out abortions." In fact, Amnesty International's commitment to abortion is so extreme that it explicitly opposes the federal ban on partial-birth abortion that the Supreme Court recently upheld.

To add insult to injury, Amnesty International thinks the public is stupid enough to buy its spin. Consider its repeated claim to take "no position as to when life begins." Of course, to demand that every country in the world allow abortion is to take a position: A human being's life does not begin--at least not in a way in which Amnesty International will permit any government on the planet to protect it--until after birth.

And while Amnesty International argues that abortion advocacy follows from its long-standing work to stop violence against women, I saw no signs that it considered whether abortion itself is simply one more attack on women. Though Amnesty International is against "forced abortions," the unspoken reality is that wherever these policy initiatives are adopted, boyfriends, husbands, and employers will be able to pressure women into getting abortions.