In 2005, when he made a longshot attempt to run for president, the founder of one of Mexico’s largest pharmacy chains came out in favour of abortion. At the time, it was a deeply divisive opinion in the Latin American country, where 88% of the population had identified as Catholic in the census five years earlier.
But as pro-abortion demonstrations and campaigns grew, leading many Mexican states to legalise abortion and the Supreme Court to decriminalise it nationwide last year, Víctor González Torres’ opinion changed. In the past seven years, the foundation affiliated with his business empire gave $86,394 to an influential group that tries to prevent pregnant people from exercising their legal right to abortion.
González Torres’ Dr Simi Foundation is not alone. openDemocracy has uncovered a wave of dark money flowing from 22 foundations run by Mexico’s most influential families and businesses to Vida y Familia, or Vifac, a non-profit organisation that runs a network of 37 ‘crisis pregnancy centres’. These clinics claim to provide pregnant women with information about reproductive health, but instead strongly discourage them from having abortions, often by bombarding them with disinformation.
