The MacArthur Foundation first began making grants in Mexico in 1986 and opened an office in Mexico City in 1992. The Foundation's current areas of emphasis in the country are population and reproductive health and human rights. Its human rights grantmaking focuses on efforts at the national level to build up leading human rights organizations, strengthen the system of public human rights commissions, and promote work in the area of police reform. There is also a special emphasis on human rights work in the states of Guerrero and Jalisco to help implement model reforms and programs and redress local human rights problems. The Foundation's population and reproductive health grantmaking in Mexico focuses on helping to reduce the highest maternal mortality ratios in the country, concentrating on the rural and indigenous women in three states, Chiapas, Guerrero, and Oaxaca, and to reduce abortion-related maternal death.
By a vote of 8 to 3, Mexico’s Supreme Court upheld a Mexico City law that allows legal abortions in the first 12 weeks of pregnancy, a decision that could affect the nation’s maternal mortality rate. MacArthur grantees participated in education efforts in support of the law as well as public hearings held by the Court, which ruled that the Mexico City law did not violate the constitution or international agreements. Clandestine abortions, especially among poor women who cannot pay for safe procedures, contribute to the nation’s high maternal mortality and morbidity rate. Experts estimate that as many as one million clandestine abortions occur in Mexico annually. The following Foundation grantees participated in the hearings and have long worked together to help end unsafe abortion: Grupo de Informacion en Reproduccion Elegida, Catolicas por el Derecho a Decidir, Population Council, Ipas Mexico and Equidad de Genero Ciudadania, Trabajo y Familia.
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