New group formed to oppose abortion in Mexico

Mexico City, Mexico, Nov 9, 2018 / 00:42 am

The new umbrella group Suma de Actores Sociales (United Social Actors) is calling citizens to stand up against efforts by president-elect Andrés Manuel López Obrador to legalize abortion, euthanasia and marijuana.

SUMAS was launched November 6 in Mexico City and unites 700 organizations from throughout the country.

Speaking with ACI Prensa, CNA's Spanish-language sister agency, Juan Dabdoub Giacoman, president of the Mexican Council for the Family and a founding member of SUMAS, said the new group seeks "to join together the greatest number of associations possible who are willing to fight to defend life, the family and the freedom of Mexicans."

Dabdoub Giacoman denounced an "ideological onslaught" by the López Obrador's transition team and their members in Congress.

Lopez Obrador won the Mexican presidential elections July 1 with 53 percent of the valid votes and will take office December 1.

The Morena party, of which the president is a member, gained the majority in both houses of the federal Congress. The new lawmakers took office September 1. Party members have introduced initiatives to legalize abortion throughout the country. Currently, abortion is illegal on the federal level except in case of rape.

Olga Sánchez Cordero, a Morena senator whom the president has appointed as the next Secretary of the Interior, assured that in the coming months she would promote the legalization of abortion, marijuana, and euthanasia measures.  

Dabdoub Giacoman said SUMAS is urging López Obrador "to make his position clear because until now all these statements have been made by his collaborators or by Morena party members in the legislature, but he has remained silent."

Members of SUMAS come from all religious backgrounds, he said. "Everyone is welcome as long as they have the same convictions regarding life, the family and the defense of freedom."

Arturo Segovia Flores, president of the More Life and More Family Council of Veracruz, told ACI Prensa that the organizations that make up the new group are not just advocacy groups, but "the vast majority of them are businesses and industrial corporations, (as well as) NGOs."

Mexican society "is at war" against the president's agenda, Segovia Flores said. "We have therefore called for resistance from this moment on, we're not going to let them succeed."

Pedro Novo, of the Governing Citizen platform, said that although López Obrador got a majority of votes to secure the presidency, "it is not a blank check."

Mexico's laws must be reformed, he said, to "empower the citizen so he can govern his public employees. Otherwise, the public employee is a dictator and we will continue to be subjugated servants."

"As there are no laws that oblige candidates to fulfill their campaign promises, they get in office and become dictators," he said.

Abortion has been legal on-demand for up to 12 weeks in Mexico City since 2007. Now is the time to act to prevent a similar fate for the entire country, Novo said.

"If we don't have the right to life guaranteed, we cannot aspire to any other right."

This article was originally published by our sister agency, ACI Prensa. It has been translated and adapted by CNA.