By Philip Pullella

ROME, June 13 (Reuters) - Amnesty International on Wednesday rejected a Vatican appeal for Catholics to withdraw support for the group over its call to decriminalise abortion.

Amnesty's new position wants to give women access to abortion when their health or human rights are in danger.

"The Catholic Church, through a misrepresented account of our position on selective aspects of abortion, is placing in peril work on human rights," Kate Gilmore, Amnesty's deputy secretary-general, said in an interview with Reuters.

She was responding to comments by Cardinal Renato Martino, the Vatican's justice minister, who accused Amnesty of "betraying its mission" and said "individuals and Catholic organisations must withdraw their support" from the group.

Gilmore said Amnesty was not promoting abortion as a universal right but stressing that women have a right to choose abortion when their human rights have been violated, particularly in cases of rape and incest.

"We are saying broadly that to criminalise women's management of their sexual reproductive rights is the wrong answer," she said, speaking by telephone from London.

"We live alongside people's life experiences. We don't run a theocracy. We have to deal with the rape survivor in Darfur who, because she is left with a pregnancy as a result of the enemy, is further ostracised by her community," Gilmore said.

Cardinal Martino, in comments made to an American Catholic newspaper, said that by taking its new stand on abortion, Amnesty had "disqualified itself as a defender of human rights".

"To selectively justify abortion, even in the cases of rape, is to define the innocent child within the womb as an enemy, a 'thing' that must be destroyed," Martino said.

Gilmore rejected this view. "This is not about abortion as a right but about women's right to be free of fear, threat and coercion as they manage the consequences of rape and human rights violations," she said.

"If the cardinal had been in Darfur and stood between (rape victims) and the stones being thrown at them, let him then talk again about whether or not Amnesty has the integrity to stand firm for human rights," she said.

World Health Organisation data shows that some 45 million unintended pregnancies are terminated annually, of which an estimated 19 million are carried out unsafely. An estimated 68,000 women die every year from unsafe abortions.

Gilmore accused the Vatican of unjustly trying to "excommunicate" Amnesty but said Amnesty will "continue to campaign for the protection of the Catholic Church" in areas where it suffers discrimination.

"We defend the right of the Church to address moral beliefs. But a human rights project is to address the state, the rule of law and to create an environment in which people can make moral choices as individuals," she said.

"We have the dirt under the nail and the blood and pain of the people that we are responding to," she said.

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