The candle burning within a cage of barbed wire has over the past 46 years become one of the world's most recognisable and potent symbols.The logo for Amnesty International is a succinct evocation of the organisation's charter for the impartial protection of human rights.
Marketers would call it brand purity. Since its inception in 1961, a determined focus on Amnesty's core principles meant even the revered likes of Nelson Mandela - whose advocacy of violence barred him from the title "prisoner of conscience" - failed to meet its high threshold for support.
It has built its admirable global reputation, along with 2.2 million members across 150 countries, on campaigns to free political prisoners.
So effectively has Amnesty International been in selling its message that the average layperson wouldn't have much trouble citing its related concerns, such as the death penalty, torture and the treatment of refugees.
But abortion?
In a move largely ignored by the mainstream press, Amnesty International decided last month, as a result of its recent Stop Violence Against Women campaign, to include abortion rights in its charter.
While it accepts that access to safe, legal abortion may be curtailed "with reasonable limitations" by the state, thus dealing with the partial-birth abortion bogyman, its new position is that Amnesty will campaign to have abortion decriminalised globally.
The backlash has already been swift and furious.
Senior figures in the Catholic Church, one of Amnesty's strongest supporters, have been among those to condemn the move and warn the issue could divide its membership.
Amnesty's official stance on abortion has been one of neutrality.
The changes will not go so far as to recognise abortion as an absolute "right" for women, because the UN and international human rights law does not support such a stance. But this fundamental distinction is a minor point to those morally opposed to abortion.
Supporters of abortion rights might reasonably choose to characterise it as a religious issue and point to the part of the Amnesty charter that maintains it is inappropriate to support or oppose any particular political, economic or religious ideology.
But even they must see that jettisoning the neutrality policy, considered as a political move, could be organisational suicide.
The US Conference of Catholic Bishops has said Amnesty risked its "excellent record as a champion of human rights"; Amnesty support groups in Catholic high schools - there are an estimated 500 in Australia - have indicated they will disband; more than 70 members of a bipartisan US Congressional caucus on abortion have argued against the change; the Australian Catholic Bishops' Conference is considering its response but a senior Catholic source indicated a "parting of the ways" was inevitable.
Can Amnesty really afford such a fracturing of its traditional support base? In an era defined by the compromises of realpolitik, it is almost breathtaking in its audacity.
The simple fact is that this move will imperil Amnesty's activities in Third World countries, where the church is one of the few champions of the oppressed.
To adopt a policy that by its very nature will alienate the world's 1.1 billion Catholics, along with members of other faiths and an unknown number outside the religious apparatus who consider abortion to be morally wrong, is an example of dogmatism overriding practical necessity.
Many will agree that cases of abortion can be couched in human rights terms. Citing instances of the victims of rape and incest being unable to procure an abortion, and the 68,000 women the World Health Organisation estimates die each year from unsafe abortions, Amnesty USA said in a press release, "As a human rights organisation, AI cannot be silent in the face of such suffering and injustice."
Supporters of abortion rights can make the moral distinction that one can believe in the sanctity of life yet support a woman's right to an abortion, but will the same distinction be held by those the organisation seeks to sway?
The world clearly needs Amnesty International. To argue it should confine itself to issues that fit uncontroversially under the human rights umbrella is not to deny that women's rights are human rights.
It is to recognise that to undermine a brand that until now has been unique in the respect it holds would fracture its support base and, along with it, its authority among the non-liberal majority of the globe.
If supporters splinter off the monolith that was Amnesty, etiolating its persuasiveness, its reproach - both silent and vocal - to abusers of human rights, any victory against the religious and moral objectors in its ranks will be Pyrrhic indeed.
Amnesty members should consider whose interests will be served by such a severe self-inflicted wound.
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