The Vatican has entreated Catholics to stop donating money to Amnesty International because the human rights group supports access to abortion for female rape victims.

Cardinal Renato Martino, president of the Vatican’s Pontifical Council for Justice and Peace, said the call to Catholics was an “inevitable consequence” of a recent decision by Amnesty’s executive to support access to abortion for women who have been victims of rape, or whose health was in danger because of their pregnancy.

In a statement the council said there should be “no more Catholic financing of Amnesty International after the organisation’s pro-abortion about turn.”

Cardinal Martino said the Church's teaching on abortion was clear, “Abortion is murder and to justify it selectively, in the event of rape, that is to define an innocent child in the belly of its mother as an enemy, as something one can destroy,” he said.

Amnesty International campaigns for internationally recognised human rights to be upheld and has worked in the past to protect those who have been coerced into having an abortion. Kate Gilmore, executive deputy Secretary General of Amnesty International accused the Vatican of employing "intimidation" tactics against the group.

Miss Gilmore told Times Online that Amnesty had moved from a position of silence on the right to abortion to a position of support for women whose lives are at risk because of pregnancy. "We wish to remove the threat and fear of criminal sanctions for women who have been raped and are seeking to exercise moral choices," Miss Gilmore said. "Within certain gestational limits women who have become pregnant as a result of violence should be able to access abortion without fear...it's not a claim that there is a human right to abortion, the Vatican have misrepresented us in that regard," she added.

Amnesty Italy said in a statement in April that it had decided to involve itself in issues relating to abortion “to the extent that they are directly linked to its actions for the right to health and against violence against women."

The move by the home of the Catholic Church follows Cardinal Keith O’Brien’s questioning of whether politicians who support abortion should be barred from receiving Holy Communion. The Cardinal, who is head of the Catholic Church in Scotland, last month likened the Scottish abortion rate to “two Dunblane Massacres every day”.

The Vatican withdrew funding from the Unicef in 1996 after the international children’s charity distributed post-intercourse spermicide to young women in refugee camps who had been raped.