ARTICLES
March 2001 ARTICLES
Contents © 2001
by Jim Holman.
All rights reserved.
Wanted: Latinos, Dead or Alive
Planned Parenthood, MacArthur Foundation Seek Fewer Mexicans
By Maggie Garcia
Population control groups today no longer sport the same names that their early twentieth century forebears did. Instead of the Eugenics Society and Birth Control League, they give themselves such respectable names as Planned Parenthood and the Population Council. In spite of a change in names, however, their goals remain the same: to force poor and minority women to limit the number of children they bear.
One Planned Parenthood program in East Los Angeles that has such a euphemistic name is Promotoras Communitarias (Community Promoters). Because, as they claim, "limited resources in the public sector have led in recent years to the renewed attention to the role of community health worker," Planned Parenthood, in 1991, initiated Promotoras Communitarias in East Los Angeles to train Latino women to go into the barrios to teach others about the acceptability and availability of abortion and artificial birth control. The program usually consists of a series of 14 talks that center around issues like abortion, birth control, "values," and sexuality. When they complete the program, participants are certified as Promotoras Communitarias, and then go out into the Latino community and give the series of talks.
The program illustrates how population control groups target Latin Americans. Though they fit into the diversity crowd, population control groups often have white, middle-class Americans who cannot speak Spanish on their staffs. To overcome this language and cultural barrier, Planned Parenthood and others have created groups like Promotoras Comunitarias that use Spanish-speaking women from the target community to work as community health workers promoting abortion and birth control.
To disguise their agenda of curtailing the birth of Mexican and Latin American babies, groups such as Planned Parenthood push their agenda under the guise of "reproductive health." Flush with money from American foundations, population control advocates often can force their views of abortion on an unwilling population. Steven Mosher, president of the Virginia-based Population Research Institute, said that he believes that the population control groups fear Mexico because it shares a common border with the United States and has a higher birth rate than the United States or Canada. "Mexico is extremely important," said Mosher. "It's right on our border. Mexico is a threat to the Holy Grail of the population controllers, and that's zero population growth." Mosher added that most population controllers "don't like people, especially people who are different from them." Currently, abortion is illegal in Mexico and many Latin American countries. With the election of Mexican President Vicente Fox, who is Catholic, population control groups may feel a greater urgency to promote their message. Mosher said he sees hope for Mexico with a Fox administration.
The MacArthur Foundation is at the forefront of financing American population control groups. According to Magaly Llaguno of Human Life International in Florida, "the MacArthur Foundation gave International Planned Parenthood Federation in New York $300,000 'for documentation of efforts to broaden family planning programs in Latin America to include concepts of sexuality and gender.'" Additionally, in fiscal year 2000, the MacArthur Foundation gave grants to various groups working in Mexico to legalize abortion and make contraceptives acceptable to Catholics there. The MacArthur Foundation is unabashed in its promotion of abortion advocacy in Latin America and in the United States, citing its grants to groups that encourage "responsible choices about human reproduction." A review of the MacArthur Foundation's grants for the year 2000 reveals exactly which groups the foundation benefits.
One beneficiary, Frances Kissling of Catholics for a Free Choice, has opened a Mexican franchise. Her franchise, Catolicas por el Derecho de Decidir, received a $150,000 grant from the MacArthur Foundation "to support Democracy and Sexuality, a network of organizations that promote sexual education." One Mexican nun, who requested anonymity, said that often times people in Mexico will see the name "Catholic" and assume it has the Church's blessings. "This is a very grave concern," she said about the group, Catholics for a Free Choice. "What the people really need is food and medicine, not abortion," she added.
Another population control group that has received funding from the MacArthur foundation targets youth. Thais Consultoria en Desarrollo Social Sociedad Civil received $105,000 "to establish permanent programs on sexual health for children and adolescents." The MacArthur Foundation also gave $200,000 to Accion Ciudadana por la Tolerancia in Mexico City. The purpose of the grant is to "promote reproductive and sexual rights and the separation of Church and State in Mexico."
According to Llaguno, Planned Parenthood uses the tactic of cultural penetration both in the United States and in Latin America. "It's easier for women to trust women who come from their communities," she said. Llaguno also noted that this same model is used by Planned Parenthood to promote abortion and contraception to Latino youths.
In February 1998, the MacArthur Foundation gave the Pacific Institute for Women's Health a grant to evaluate the effectiveness of Planned Parenthood's Promotoras Communitarias program in East Los Angeles. The study was conducted to see if the training program was effective and "how the program has influenced the lives and reproductive health of health promoters and women in the community." The study cites that, to date, Planned Parenthood has reached over 12,000 women in East Los Angeles with (as of 1998) only 35 active promotoras. In order to retain more women, Planned Parenthood now has women sign a year-long contract, stating that they will stay with the program for this duration, and pays them $25 for each session they attend. As one priest put it, this resembles a "bounty they put on women." Another study conducted by Philliber Research Associates in 1992-94, states "the Latina promotoras in the program are almost exclusively Catholic women and mothers. Most of them are immigrant women from Mexico."
The Pacific Institute covered the role of religion, namely the Catholic Church, in the lives of the promotoras and the target community. One promotora was quoted as saying, "I gave a class on HIV, and a girl, she got angry and started to cry. She said that because of her religion she wasn't allowed to hear about sexual things. And I tried to explain to her that this was an option, that I was only giving information."
The study admitted that "resistance to abortion is present in the Latino community. For example, some churches have refused to accept educational services from the program, citing their opposition to abortion. Promotoras approach this issue with caution. They do not wish to engage in moral debates with community members or offend them. Yet, promotoras are often called upon to correct misinformation about abortion laws, service provisions and women's rights to choose whether or not to have an abortion."
When I went to take pictures of the Planned Parenthood clinic in East Los Angeles where the Promotoras Communitarias are based, three clinic employees came out and demanded that I stop. "This is a private building," they shouted. I pointed out to them that, standing in the middle of the street, I was perfectly legal. They then asked, "who are you?" After I told them who I was, they threatened to call the police if I continued to take pictures and demanded that I turn my camera over to them. When I refused, they came towards me. Fearful that they would grab my camera I warned them that I would call the police, and quickly escaped to the Los Angeles County Medical Center's outpatient clinic, about a quarter mile away.
Not knowing how I would get back to my car, which was parked near the clinic, I asked two heavily tattooed men in a small car if they would drive me there since I was being chased. They looked at me incredulously and asked why I was being chased. When I told them I had been taking pictures of a building, they laughed and asked me who was chasing me. After I told them that it was employees at the Planned Parenthood clinic, one of them then asked, "don't you support a woman's right to choose?" I was taken aback, and wondered -- do even gang bangers in the barrio now use Planned Parenthood jargon? I don't know whether my telling them that Planned Parenthood targets us Latinas at all impressed them, though they were kind enough to drive me back to my car. Because of my two friends, I had no further trouble from the Planned Parenthood folks.