Catholics for a Free Choice spends millions in Latin American abortion support

Lima, Peru, Nov 26, 2012 / 04:06 pm MT ().- The abortion advocacy group Catholics For a Free Choice has invested more than $13 million over the last decade in pushing the legalization of abortion in Latin America.

IRS documents show that between 2002 and 2010 – the last year of tax filings available for review – the organization spent $13,716,679 to promote the procedure in Central and South America.

Founded in 1973, the group has an annual budget of $3 million, which it obtains through organizations that openly finance abortion, such as the Ford Foundation, which donated $300,000 in 2011.

Additional funding has been attributed to the MacArthur Foundation, which donated $275,000 between 2009 and 2012, and the William and Flora Hewlett Foundation, which gave over $600,000 thousand in November of 2011 during a period of 24 months.

The Playboy Foundation is also among the group's financial backers.

In October of this year, the spokesperson for the U.S. Bishops' Conference, Sr. Mary Ann Walsh, told The Washington Times that Catholics For a Free Choice “is not a Catholic organization.”

“It never has been, and it was created to oppose the Catholic position on abortion,” Walsh emphasized.

The main offices for the group are in Washington, D.C., but the organization has outposts in Peru, Argentina, Bolivia, Chile, Mexico, El Salvador, Nicaragua, Paraguay and Spain.

Its average annual budget for abortion advocacy campaigns in Latin America is estimated at $1.2 million.