by Carlos Beltramo and Carlos Polo
On April 26, 2007, the Mexican Congress decriminalized abortion. This outcome was the result of 40 years of pressure—and tens of millions in funding—from the U.S.-based population control establishment. But this decision did not mark the end of this ideological colonization, but only its beginning.
In the years since, U.S.- and UN-funded groups have continued their efforts to promote abortion throughout the country to drive down the birth rate even further. They do this despite the fact that Mexican women now average only 1.73 children. Not only is this less than the 2.1 children needed to maintain the current population, it is also less than America’s 1.84 children per woman.
Some of the bad actors on the abortion front are local radical feminists, while others are merely fronts for the notorious international abortion cartel. But they share one demonic spirit, a spirit which claims: “Mexico’s problems stem from the fact that there are too many Mexicans. This ‘surplus population’ must be eliminated.”
PRI has worked with Mexico’s pro-life leaders for decades to combat this attack on the unborn. We have never wavered in our goal of saving lives in Mexico or anywhere else.
But the situation in Mexico, like that in the post-Roe United States, is complicated. Each one of Mexico’s 31 states has its own constitution, which means that that battle for life has to be fought on 31 different fronts. We have been in a race, state by state, to save the unborn while the abortion industry fights to legalize abortion and open more abortuaries.
Both the radical feminists and the abortionists have always insisted that their primary motivation in promoting the legalization of abortion has been to defend “human rights.” Judging by the amount of money they spend promoting abortion, however, it is clear that they are a business. They spend tens of millions of dollars in order to make tens of millions of dollars.
If they were truly concerned about human rights, they would be addressing the legitimate and pressing social needs of the Mexican people. The corruption and violence that they endure at the hands of the cartels, for instance, are a manifest violation of their legitimate human rights. What about addressing the sector of the population whose basic needs for proper nutrition and health care go unmet? Or what about providing opportunities for Mexicans at home so they won’t be tempted to illegally cross over the border?
Put simply, “human rights” is a false flag to distract us from the reality that their objective is to murder infants in the womb, and they are willing to spend vast amounts of money to accomplish this end.
This “Cartel de la Muerte” (“Death Cartel”), as it might be called, consists of four main groups. The pro-life news site Contextos.co recently reviewed financial reports from the Mexican Government’s tax offices to find out just how much money these groups raised and spent to solve the “too many Mexicans” problem in 2022.
The first piece of the puzzle is Mexfam – “The Mexican Foundation for Family Planning.” This institution was founded in 1965 under the name “Fundación para Estudios de Población” (“Foundation for Population Studies”). In 1969, it became a subsidiary of IPPF, the international abortion combine. In 1984, recognizing that the public was catching on to the fact that “population control” really meant “people control”, it changed its name to Mexfam.
We’re only interested in helping you plan your families, Mexfam insisted, not “controlling” how many children you have. But the reality remained the same.
Mexfam currently employs 300 people located in 10 states of the country. Add to this number 908 volunteers promoting abortion in other states. In 2022, Mexfam received a total of US$3,823,940. The funding came from some significant foreign donors, including IPPF, the “British Council,” Johnson & Johnson, UCLA, Direct Relief International, and the Bocar Group.
Ipas Mexico, the second major group, has been exposed by PRI on several occasions. The Ipas network “works globally to advance reproductive justice.” Under that banner, the group promotes the “abortion pill” – which actually comprises two pills in a lethal combination. As the PRI reported just last week, those two pills kill the baby by first starving her, and then expelling her remains from the womb.
Last year, Ipas received $2,403,901. Unlike the other members of the Cartel, Ipas does not report the origin of its funding. What are they trying to hide? Funding from the pharmaceutical industry, perhaps?
Catholics for the Right to Decide is the third group. This group, which attempts to hijack the moral authority of the Catholic Church to promote the grievously immoral act of abortion, received $2,820,258 in 2022. Among its donors was the U.N. Trust Fund to End Violence against Women, which is funded in part by the U.S. taxpayer. Other major donors include the Ford Foundation and the Wellspring Philanthropic Fund.
The fourth group is GIRE, short for “Grupo de Información en Reproducción Elegida” (“Information Group On Reproductive Choice”). GIRE is the group that brought the legal case that resulted in the Mexican Supreme Court’s pro-abortion ruling this past September. GIRE was founded in 1992 with the sole objective of seeking the decriminalization of abortion in Mexico, and it does not hesitate to manipulate the legal process to achieve its goal, as PRI has reported.
GIRE received U.S. $1,756,091 in 2022 to fund its legal lawfare. Its donors include the Arcus Foundation and the Foundation for a Just Society – both normally focused on LGTBIQ+ (etc., etc.) issues but curiously interested in the legalization of abortion in Mexico. Then there is the Ford Foundation, George Soros’ “Open Society,” the William and Flora Hewlett Foundation, the (Jesuit) Georgetown University’s O’Neill Institute for National and Global Health Law, the Stewart R. Mott Foundation, and the Wellspring Philanthropic Fund. GIRE also takes pains to extend its special thanks to MacKenzie Scott, the former wife of Jeff Bezos, the founder of Amazon.
One wonders what these donors think about Marta Lamas’s 2018 confession. Lamas, one of GIRE’s founders, admitted that the group had lied for years by claiming that 100,000 Mexican women were dying from illegal abortions every year. When she was asked about the number, she said, laughing, “We inflated the figures.” The figure of 100,000 was actually the number of women of reproductive age who died in the whole country from any cause.
All these groups claim to represent Mexican women, but the bulk of their funding comes from activists or institutions in the United States who want to abort as many Mexican babies as possible. In fact, “following the money” reveals just how obsessed the international population control movement continues to be with forcing down the birth rate in Mexico and around the world.
The pro-life movement is fighting back in Mexico. It has less in the way of financial resources, but far more in the way of the truth about the value of each and every human life, than these abortion mercenaries.
We at the Population Research Institute continue to support them in their efforts to save lives. We ask Our Lady of Guadalupe to put Mexico’s unborn children under her maternal care.
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Dr. Carlos Beltramo, Ph.D. is the director of PRI’s European Office, while Carlos Polo is the director of PRI’s Ibero-American Office
