Whatever it is, they’re against it
Translated from “Morena se ha convertido en el partido de la muerte: FNF” (Rodrigo Vera, in today’s Proceso)
MEXICO CITY (proces.com.mx) .— Waving banners reading“no to abortion” and “no to same-sex marriages”, demonstrations in 100 Mexican cities took place Saturday, organized by the National Front for the Family (FNF for it’s initials in Spanish).
The objective of the demonstrations is to prevent state legislatures around the country from passing bills that would ease abortion restrictions or bring laws regarding same sex marriage into conformity with the Constitution.
In Mexico City about 500 protesters marched from the Monument of the Angel of Independence to the Monument to the Mother, while chanting: “LIfe yes, abortion no!” and “Listen, President! LIfe defends itself” (it rhymes in Spanish) and “Mother and father. Original design” (presumably expressing opposition to adoption by same sex couples)
Demonstrators carried the Mexican flag, banners with the image of the Virgin of Guadalupe and placards reading among other things, “A human fetus has the same value as an adult”, “Gender ideology harms children”, “all life is worth”, and “We do not vote against the family” .
Women wore blue scarves, meant to symbolize their struggle for the life of the unborn. Other protesters carried rosaries in hand, praying as if they were on religious pilgrimage. Among the demonstrators were nuns in their traditional habits.
FNF leader Rodrigo Iván Cortés, interviewed by APRO, said that marches were held in about one hundred cities in the country, including the capitals of the 32 states. According to Cortés, “about 200 thousand people participated”.1
The main objective of the demonstrations, he adds, “is to reject the bills that currently under consideration in state congresses that are aimed at decriminalizing abortion and legalizing same-sex marriage.”
He points out that currently there are iniatiatives in 23 state congresses to decriminalize abortion, while 14 states are looking to legalize gay marriage. Hence, their claims are directed primarily at local and federal legislators, but also at President Andrés Manuel López Obrador.
The FNF president claims López Obrador’s policies are”contradictory”; on the one hand, Cortés says that AMLO claims to be defending the family, as evidenced by his references to the Cartela Moral in his speeches, but at the same time promoting abortion and same-sex marriage.2.
For Cortés, Interior Minister Olga Sánchez Cordero is the main driver of these measures in the lopezobradorista government, which leads to his conclusion that, Sánchez Cordero, as a party leader has made Morea the “party of death and gender ideology.”
He regrets that “to the deaths that the fight between drug cartels is leaving, the deaths of the unborn, of the most defenseless beings are being added. In Mexico we live a culture of death”.
He adds that the FNF is preparing for a larger national march and that the group plans to picket outside the National Palace during the President’s Monday morning press conference, bringing together hundreds of organizations from around the country, with the support of the Conference of the Mexican Episcopate (the Catholic Bishops’ Conference).
1 Without independent verification, it wouldn’t be possible to estimate the actual number of marchers, or marches, throughout the country. A demonstration attracting only 500 people is a very small one for Mexico City, and normally demonstrations favoring popular causes turn out a half million or more people.
2. The Cartiila Moral (“Moral Primer”), written by Mexican diplomat and philosopher Alfonsa Reyes shortly after the end of the Second World War was an attempt to define, in a simple, readable form, the moral and ethical duties of a citizen and the state. It says nothing specific about abortion or marriage, although it does mention respecting cultural traditions among the seven stages of respect (for self, for the family, for the community, for the culture, for the state, for humanity, for nature, for the planet),
The Mex Files 