In a video that recently went viral, a well-known feminist activist revealed that the campaign to legalise abortion in Mexico “raised the stats.”
“At the time, I recall, we ladies said that 100,000 women perished from illegal abortions. In reality, 100,000 people perished nationwide from all illnesses. Marta Lamas, a member of the GIRE founding team and professor at the National Autonomous University of Mexico, said that “we exaggerated the numbers” (UNAM).
To the guests’ amusement, she said, “It was a really difficult process where we learnt many things.
Before that, Lamas said that she saw GIRE as a “little tool” to pursue a “radical objective”: “I want abortion to be decriminalised,” as can be seen in the entire video of the panel discussion “Conversation on the Feminist Movement,” hosted by the Metropolitan Autonomous University.
Although it was uploaded on October 25, 2016, the Steps for Life platform released the video on Instagram recently, causing it to become viral.
Co-founder of the pro-life website Juventud y Vida A.C., Frida Espinosa Later, it was tweeted by (Youth and Life).
Abortion on demand was made legal in the nation’s capital for up to 12 weeks of pregnancy thanks to the work of feminist groups like GIRE and the then-leader of the Government of the Federal District (now known as the Government of Mexico City), Marcelo Ebrard.
With the support of his political party, Morena, and the support of the current Mexican president, Andrés Manuel López Obrador, eight additional states have enacted abortion-decriminalizing legislation that is comparable to that of Mexico City.
Currently serving as López Obrador’s minister of international affairs, Ebrard is a potential rival for the presidency in 2024.
What is GIRE, and how powerful is it?
GIRE was established thirty years ago and has grown to become one of Mexico’s biggest and most effective pro-abortion platforms.
Though Lamas remembered that she launched the initiative with Patricia Mercado, a prominent senator for the Citizens’ Movement party, one could scarcely argue that it had humble origins.
Two years after GIRE’s founding, only one of the foundations that supports it, the MacArthur Foundation, gave $250,000 to “fund a public education campaign on reproductive rights in Mexico (over three years)” in 1994.
Since then, the MacArthur Foundation has contributed more than $2.5 million to GIRE alone (about 50 million Mexican pesos).
The William & Flora Hewlett Foundation, another financial foundation supporting GIRE, has provided the group almost $1.8 million (equal to 36 million Mexican pesos) since 2000.
Lying is the feminist approach.
Director of Steps for Life in Mexico Pilar Rebollo noted that while “this film is not new,” it does help to “uncover” the reality about the abortion business in an interview with ACI Prensa, CNA’s Spanish-language sister news agency.
She bemoaned the fact that “such cynicism as ‘oh, that’s how we did it,’ and they chuckle’ can be seen on the film as evidence that “we haven’t been on top of detecting their falsehoods.”
She stated that in recent years the abortion movement had circulated false rumours that there were women in Mexican jails who had been convicted of having an abortion, saying that this style of feminism was “no longer unexpected.”
Rebollo remarked, “Their approach of lying, inflating, and exaggerating is not new.
We “cannot permit additional laws, arming movements, or forming ideologies, with falsehoods, with such cynicism,” Rebollo said.
She underlined that this video clip was timeless despite its age. There are surprises everywhere.
And what has surprised us is listening to feminists talk among themselves in a way that makes saying things like “yeah, we lie and exaggerate” seem natural, even funny.
How terrifying it is that GIRE is known as the ‘Group for Information on Chosen Reproduction,’ said Rebollo, “and how terrifying is that approach of twisting the truth, of manipulating it to achieve other kinds of purposes and advantages.”
The pro-life leader said that “they’re lying to the lady (telling her) that she can’t be a mother and that she doesn’t know how to be a mother, that motherhood is a diagnosis,” so “we mustn’t let up and we cannot be sleeping in the face of this.”
She said, “They are separating her from reality, from nature, and from normal life to create another parallel universe.
For years, abortion supporters have “used mortality from clandestine abortion as a justification, offering hundreds of data that can’t be validated anywhere,” according to Frida Espinosa of the Youth and Life platform, who spoke to ACI Prensa.
She bemoaned the fact that “even so, feminist organisations and the media don’t challenge them.”
The fact is that this data was manipulated and falsely presented. Marta Lamas, an activist who has spent years attempting to legitimise the murder of people, embraces it even if it is something we already knew.
Espinosa issued a warning, stating: “That’s the reality of the movement: They always seek to change the truth to further their own interests, regardless of who they have to deceive or manipulate.”
Public education
“It’s very important to inform the public that the same abortion groups, which have promoted the decriminalisation of abortion, admit that they lied about the number of deaths from clandestine abortion,” said Marcial Padilla, director of the Mexican pro-life organisation ConParticipación.
She noted that some people support decriminalising abortion because they think it will save the lives of thousands of women who would perish from having an illegal abortion.
“It’s very sad to see that in something as serious as abortion lies are believed and the health and lives of women are used, specifically to abort and to leave her to face her pregnancy alone,” Padilla said of the abortion debate.
She emphasised that “we pro-life organisations must continue to act clearly, firmly, to defend, and with love, the mother and the life of the child.”