In addition to the International Planned Parenthood Federation (IPPF), there are other organizations which use different strategies in order to legalize abortion throughout the world and to implement "family planning", that is, contraception, sterilization and abortion, preceded and accompanied by hedonistic sex education. Among these organizations that are also part of the plot against life and family, is ISIS International, located in Santiago, Chile; and Catholics for a Free Choice, whose main office is in the United States with branches in Mexico, Brazil, and Uruguay. Both anti-life and anti-family feminist organizations collaborate with each other and with a world network called International Women's Health Coalition (IWHC), located in the U.S. They also collaborate with the Global Women's Network for Reproductive Rights, whose main office is in Holland.(1)

This last organization publishes a magazine in English and also in Spanish, which is sent periodically to its allies in Latin America, and sends "solidarity petitions" to its member in order to promote abortion, lesbianism, etc., in the different countries.(2) When the battle for the legalization of abortion in Chiapas, Mexico took place, the network sent a communiqué to all its members throughout the world, asking them to write the Mexican legislators in support of the "right" to abortion.(3)

ISIS International is the main anti-life and anti-family organization in Latin America, and it boasts that since 1989 it has had "more than 10,000 contacts in 150 countries".(4) The name Isis is inspired by the Egyptian goddess of knowledge and creation. A group of feminists founded this organization in 1974, and it began to "operate originally from Rome, Italy, and Geneva, Switzerland".(5)

In 1984 ISIS International opened an office in Santiago, Chile, in order to "coordinate the programs for Latin America and have an international center, oriented toward promoting communication and the influx of information". This so-called "Center for Documentation and Information"(6) is "the important base of all its activities and programs as an institution", because it "gathers, then disseminates information to all parts of the world", in order to "make it as widely usable as possible for the women's groups".(7) In 1986 the process of establishing a data bank was initiated. Today, the Center has a bibliographical data base with approximately 4,500 registries and their summaries.(8) Two of the periodic publications issued by ISIS International are "Ediciones de las Mujeres" and "Mujeres en Acción."(9)

Another of their publications is the magazine of the Women's Health Network of Latin America and the Caribbean, which "since 1984 reports on the activities of groups that work for health in Latin America and the Caribbean, and gathers all of the debates concerning women's health".(10) (Abortion and contraception are considered "women's health" issues.) One of the most important programs of ISIS International is its magazine, which was created that same year.(11)

In 1989 ISIS International launched a world-wide campaign in order to "stop maternal mortality and morbidity", a strategy to fight for the "depenalization of contraception, sterilization, and abortion in each country where they are totally or partially illegal; by pressuring governments to develop good [?] sex education programs for the entire population".(12) This strategy is the same one being used by other anti-life organizations, under the name of "safe motherhood". After they falsely inflate the number of maternal deaths by illegal abortions, the pro-abortion groups claim that "legal and safe" abortion is "needed".

One of the main leaders of ISIS International, Amparo Claro, who is the head of the NGO's (Non-governmental Organizations) for the International Conference on Population and Development, which will take place in Cairo next September, collaborates closely with the pseudocatholic group, Catholics for a Free Choice (CFFC), whose executive director is Francis Kissling. CFFC is ferociously anti-Catholic, seeking to undermine the very foundations of Catholic moral principles: the right to life, especially of unborn babies, and the dignity of the transmission of human life. Indeed, CFFC promotes abortion and contraception under the euphemisms of "reproductive health care" and "family planning".

CFFC has extended its diabolical influence to Latin America, where they base their operations in Uruguay and hold outreaches in Mexico, Argentina and Brazil - the latter being their most recent installation. Kissling travels extensively throughout Latin America promoting CFFC's deadly agenda of baby killing through abortion and abortifacient contraception. She is well received by much of the press wherever she goes and gets extensive coverage.

Kissling was on the board of directors of the IWHC, together with Donna E. Shalala, who was appointed Secretary of Health and Human Services by President Clinton. These groups organize activities and publish anti-life literature in Latin America and the rest of the world.(13)

CFFC's Latin American branches, "Católicas" por el Derecho a Decidir, like their ungodly "mother" organization, have lots of money, with which they publish and disseminate several publications, the most important of which is the magazine Conciencia, the Spanish counterpart of US CFFC's Conscience, which they offer free to anyone who is interested in their work in Latin America. It is through this publication that CFFC seeks to corrupt and win over friends to their cause in these countries. Conciencia is also a link between CFFC and the other anti-life/family feminist groups.

Conciencia also prints the Spanish translation of articles of old pro-abortion "Catholic theologians" and collaborators of CFFC, such as Daniel McGuire and Rosemary Ruether. These CFFC leaders, besides Kissling herself and all the other CFFC members, teach the dangerous nonsense that a Catholic can believe "in conscience", that abortion is not a sin, and still be a Catholic in good standing. In fact, the purpose of Conscience and Conciencia is to promote their heresy all over the US and Latin America.

Another way in which CFFC does this is through booklets, brochures and color comic books. In Mexico, for example, CFFC distributes one such comic book, in which the sacrilegious claim is made that since Mary was asked by the Angel whether or not she agreed to be the Mother of God, then any pregnant woman has the same right to decide whether to continue carrying her unborn child to term or to abort him or her. In that same comic book CFFC claims that since the Pope has not condemned abortion as a mortal sin ex-cathedra, it is then left to the individual Catholic's conscience to decide the morality of this procedure.

CFFC ran a whole issue of Conscience on "A New Rite: Conservative Catholic Organizations and Their Allies. Who's Right?", in which they included 5 pages on HLI, one of which was an article called "I Was an `Anti-Life' Spy", in which the author boasted of her undetected intrusion in an "Inner Circle" meeting at one of HLI's World Conferences.

CFFC, like IPPF and others, is using the "Safe Motherhood" strategy to legalize abortion in all Hispanic countries. Basically it consists of the same fallacy pro-aborts used to legalize abortion here in the US 20 years ago: produce phony statistics about "thousands" of women dying from illegal abortions, then tell the public you need to legalize abortion in order to make it "safe and rare" (like Clinton has "promised"). CFFC, Isis International, etc., are trying very hard to influence legislators in most Latin American countries so that they will do away with laws that protect unborn babies.

Latin Americans are beginning to realize the danger groups such as CFFC and others are posing to their society. Two months ago we received a fax from our contacts in Mexico about a lecture given at the National University in Mexico City on April 22nd by CFFC member Dr. Christine Gudorf, about "Feminist Sexual Ethics". Dr. Gudorf holds the Catholic Chair of Theology at Florida International University (FIU).

CFFC is causing problems in Brazil too. Archbishop José Cardoso Sobrinho, of Recife, Brazil, ordered Sister Ivone Gebara, a feminist CFFC "theologian", to publicly retract her pro-abortion position. Upon her refusal to do so, the Archbishop reported her case to the Vatican and threatened her with sanctions that would affect her religious status.

The IWHC, based in the U.S. but active in Latin America, promotes abortifacient contraceptives, sterilization and abortion, and calls these "reproductive health services". Its leaders call abortion killing centers "reproductive health centers".(14) As suggested by its name, the IWHC uses "women's health" as a strategic term in order promote abortion and contraception, and make them acceptable in those countries (especially in Latin America), where the traditional values in favor of life and family are still ruling. The groups and individuals affiliated with IWHC call an unwanted pregnancy a situation of "violence" against women which affects their health, and then consider abortion a "health service", a "human right", or even "an act of mercy".(15)

The organization Family Care International, a promoter of the Safe Motherhood Initiative, has adopted the same wide definition of the term "reproductive health", for it includes in it besides information and services on contraceptives and abortifacients for women and adolescents, "abortion services where these are allowed by the law".(16)

Precisely, another of the main strategies that is now being used in order to legalize abortion throughout Latin America, is to consider it one more "family planning service" and even a "health service". Any obstruction of these "services" is considered "discrimination" against women. Fred Sai, President of IPPF, wrote in The Lancet (Feb.2, 1992), that no maternal health program can be effective if it does not include legalized abortion. Fred Sai has been given the Population Award by the United Nations, because of his "contributions" to the investigation of "family planning".(17)

In Uruguay a bill was introduced to further liberalize abortion, articles 1 through 10 of this proposed legislation would increase the number of instances in which abortion can be legally performed. Article 11 states that "family planning" is a "right", and that the Convention for the Elimination of all Discrimination Against Women, approved by the United Nations in 1979, guarantees this international commitment, which must be abided by.(18)

It is important to note that the Convention "demands that all countries which have signed it should eliminate discrimination against women in the exercise of the right to health care, including family planning".(19) The Convention, like other international statements, establishes the "right" to family planning.(20) It "gathers principles that are accepted widely in order to gain equality for women and transforms them into laws that are binding".(21) The Latin American countries, except Puerto Rico, are the first region of the world that has voted to ratify this convention, and it has "obligated itself to revise its legislation in order to make it conform to this document".(22)

IPPF has revealed in its controversial report "The Human Right to Family Planning", that it plans to use the Convention in order to force the governments to implement its anti-life and family policies, and it included in its definition of "family planning" in said report, abortion, contraception and sterilization for all, including children 10 years old and older, without parental consent; and of course population control education in the schools.(23) Are the proponents of the abortion law in Uruguay planning to include abortion as "family planning", and thus force the Uruguayan government to accept it as one more constitutional "right"? Will other Latin American governments follow suit?

These same strategies will be used at Cairo, in addition to the myth of "overpopulation" and "the protection of the environment", in order to try to legalize abortion and implement even more widely "family planning" and hedonistic and anti-life sex education throughout the world, especially in the developing countries and in particular in Latin America.(24)

One of the reasons we at HLI-Miami planned our First Conference for Life and Family in Santiago, Chile, which took place August 19-, 1994, is because we are very concerned about the inroads against life and family that all these anti-life organizations, especially Isis International and CFFC, are making in Latin America.

It is obvious that much work is needed, if we are going to stop the anti-life onslaught from the U.S. to Latin American countries.

Originally published in Spanish in "Escoge la Vida" Newsletter, Jan-April, 1994, Special Issue on Population.