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Vifac: The anti-abortion group targeting women on the Mexico-US border [1]
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Date: 2023-11
Since federal protection for abortion in the US was removed a year ago, when the Supreme Court overturned its decades-old Roe v Wade ruling, thousands of American women seeking safe abortions have looked south to the northern border states of Mexico for reproductive choice.
But in three of those states – Chihuahua, Nuevo León and Sonora – Latinas are themselves experiencing a repeat of the backlash seen in Texas and other US states, as anti-abortion groups target women and girls (including potential victims of rape) with misleading advertising and misinformation about their rights, a new investigation by openDemocracy and Mexican media outlet La Verdad de Juárez has found.
“It seems like we are in a terrible movie where women always lose,” Andrea Sánchez, a reproductive rights activist based in Sonora, told openDemocracy. “Several laws in our state protect women and allow abortions, but this does not always happen because the health services are inadequate and stigmatise women.”
Although abortion rights have improved in the past few years, Mexican women can face a difficult path to accessing abortion, depending on where they live. Twelve of the country’s 32 states now allow terminations on request within the first 12 weeks of pregnancy. A Mexican Supreme Court’s ruling in September 2021 decriminalised abortion and this September, the Supreme Court ruled that abortion rights are protected nationwide, opening the way for federal regulation. Public health care providers are already obliged to provide abortions to survivors of rape.
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However, these three states (Chihuahua, Sonora and Nuevo Léon) tend to take a more conservative approach, despite the Supreme Court’s stance. Abortion is permitted in Chihuahua and Sonora only if the life of the mother is at risk; Nuevo León allows other health risks to be grounds for exemption. The states also impose time limits, usually 12 to 13 weeks’ gestation. We also found that effective access to abortion is marred by red tape, medical staff who declare themselves conscientious objectors, and other barriers imposed by local authorities.
Anti-abortion organisations, some masquerading as pro-choice support groups, also play a significant role in limiting reproductive choice and misinforming women and girls about the options available to them.
Mexican organisation Vifac (Vida y Familia AC), founded in 1985, runs a network of 37 centres across Mexico as well as one in Brownsville, Texas, on the US-Mexico border. Like other anti-abortion outfits working in Mexican border areas, this well-funded Catholic group advertises an array of services: accommodation for pregnant women and girls in residential shelters; nutritional, medical and psychological care; job training workshops; school classes; and legal advice during adoption.
Several testimonies collected by openDemocracy and La Verdad de Juárez reveal that Vifac and other anti-abortion groups in the region portray themselves online as pro-choice support groups or abortion facilitators, with messages such as: “Enjoy your freedom and bodily autonomy,” or: “Remember that you decide on your body.”
Vifac claims to provide vulnerable women with unwanted pregnancies with “alternatives for their development and that of their child”. According to its 2022 report, it provided financial assistance to 1,316 pregnant women and gave information to 18,128 women via its hotlines and social media platforms.
But sources familiar with the group’s activities described pregnant people – including minors and suspected survivors of sexual abuse – being misinformed and coerced into continuing their pregnancies. The group has also been accused of offering false or “irregular” promises of adoption.
Vifac has close ties with municipal and state governments in the three border states mentioned above, according to information obtained by our investigation.
For example, the federal family and child welfare system (known as DIF) in Sonora confirmed its connection with Vifac and said it had given the group 120,000 Mexican pesos (about £5,700) for “social projects” in 2022. The state prosecutor's office said it offered Vifac as a counselling provider to pregnant women who had reported being raped, and that it had referred two women to Vifac since 2016.
In Nuevo León, the prosecutor’s office admitted sending at least two women to Vifac in 2023, while the state’s Human Rights Commission had an agreement with the organisation that saw the groups refer women to each other, and work together on courses and workshops. DIF authorities in Nuevo León denied having information.
Activists and medical professionals who spoke to us say these connections raise concerns, particularly given the legal mandate of the Human Rights Commission and DIF to protect minors who have suffered sexual violence and to uphold federal abortion laws. Sandra Cardona, a member of the Monterrey-based organisation Necesito Abortar, said: “Withholding clear and scientifically accurate information constitutes obstetric violence.”
Deceptive and harmful practices
A therapist who worked for over a year at a Vifac centre in Chihuahua state (and asked not to be named) told us about practices at the centre that she described as “medically and psychologically harmful”.
She told us many clients had learned about Vifac through social media posts with messages such as “Are you pregnant? Do you need help? Call.” Several wanted to know about how to terminate their pregnancies, she said, but Vifac had not given them accurate or timely information, which meant that by the time she met them they were all past the 13-week time limit for legal abortions.
“All they [Vifac staff] were doing was re-victimising them and even kind of punishing them,” she said, “as if they had to feel ashamed or bad for having done something wrong [getting pregnant].”
The therapist said that when she believed or learned that her clients were victims of sexual violence, she would ask Vifac staff to refer them to urgent primary care where they could get specialised assistance or an abortion. But her requests were ignored, she said.
She was also assigned the task of organising workshops to help the women gain skills and get jobs, but most of these workshops never took place; instead, the women received ‘spiritual’ counselling. “Every day, they had to pray the rosary as part of their chores [in return for accommodation at Vifac’s shelter for vulnerable pregnant women],” the therapist said.
The therapist frequently told the centre’s director about the violence experienced by her clients. Many of her worries were dismissed, she said. She also struggled to educate the women about domestic and gender violence while they were being lectured by other staff members on purity culture and virginity.
As well as the omission of key information about their legal rights, the therapist alleged that women consistently received misinformation from staff about abortion, spanning both moral and medical aspects. They were wrongly led to believe in severe risks such as death or irreversible effects on reproductive health, she said. The therapist also said Vifac framed motherhood as a “sacred duty” and abortion as equivalent to “taking a life”.
She was instructed by Vifac to push clients to consider adoption rather than interrupting their pregnancies – even for teenagers under the age of consent (which varies from state to state).
The therapist gave the example of an 11-year-old girl, who lived with her mother and stepfather in a poor neighbourhood in Ciudad Juárez, the largest city in Chihuahua, which lies opposite El Paso in Texas.
She was described in Vifac’s internal records as getting pregnant after having sex with her “boyfriend”, and as willing to give birth. But in the therapist’s eyes, the girl had been raped – a view supported by the law, in which 11-year-olds are below the age of consent. "An 11-year-old girl cannot fully understand and consciously say that she wants to become pregnant,” she explained.
Reluctant to endorse Vifac’s practices, the therapist left her job. She said she had not understood Vifac’s position on abortion before taking the role, believing it simply to have been an organisation helping women in difficult situations.
Vifac in Chihuahua
Vifac’s Casa Hogar shelter in Ciudad Juárez appears to offer a warm welcome. At the entrance is a poster of a pregnant woman holding her belly alongside the message: “Let’s celebrate life.” Statues and portraits of the Virgin of Guadalupe appear in the kitchen, living room and bedrooms. A bedroom wall dedicated to new mothers and their newborns is adorned with a painting that reads: “The incarnation is a beautiful story of divine love in Mary’s womb.” The incarnation refers to the Christian belief in God becoming human through the birth of Jesus.
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[1] Url:
https://www.opendemocracy.net/en/5050/mexico-abortion-rights-vifac-roe-wade-us-heartbeat-international/
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