Puerto Rico Is the New Battleground for Women’s Reproductive Rights

SAN JUAN — There is a new battleground in the fight for women’s reproductive rights, and it’s here in Puerto Rico. 

Governor Jennifer González-Colón, a staunch supporter of President Donald Trump, recently signed Senate Bill 923, amending Puerto Rico’s Penal Code to grant legal personhood to embryos and fetuses. Now, the nasciturus — a Latin term meaning “one who is to be born” — is considered an individual with rights and protections from the moment of conception, rather than at birth as previously. 

The change feels dystopian and mirrors what has already happened in Alabama, Arkansas, and Oklahoma. 

González-Colón signed the bill, which her pro-statehood Partido Nuevo Progresista (PNP) pushed through, without holding public hearings and disregarding warnings from lawyers, health professionals, and feminist groups about the potential legal chaos for doctors and devastating effects on gestating people.

The change, according to her, was meant for “consistency" and “justice," to complement a law named after a pregnant woman in Puerto Rico who was murdered in April 2021. Conservative politicians and anti-abortion groups in Puerto Rico — and outside of it — have celebrated it as a milestone in the history of the pro-life movement. 

I see little reason to celebrate.

I’ve spent years documenting the gradual erosion of abortion rights in the archipelago. After the Dobbs v. Jackson decision eviscerated Roe v. Wade in 2022, I watched conservative Puerto Rican politicians and pro-life groups — emboldened by the ruling — adopt the U.S. anti-abortion lobby’s blueprint and wield legislation as their weapon. The most recent example before S923 was PS 297, restricting abortion access for adolescents under age 15. It was signed into law late last year.

Abortion has been legal in Puerto Rico since the right was enshrined in the island’s constitution, which is separate from the U.S. Constitution, and protected by the right to intimacy under Puerto Rico’s penal code. It’s allowed on request if performed or prescribed by a physician to protect the pregnant person’s life or health — including mental health. There are no gestational limits, no parental consent is needed, and waiting periods are required. 

In 1980, a pivotal case involving a minor and her physician helped shape modern abortion law in Puerto Rico. In the landmark Pueblo v. Duarte, Dr. Pablo Duarte Mendoza was sentenced to four years in prison for performing a first-trimester abortion on a 16-year-old girl. On appeal, the Puerto Rican Supreme Court ruled in his favor, determining that abortion is protected by constitutional right on the island. 

Although S923 has significantly altered how the penal code treats a pregnant person, it doesn’t directly criminalize abortion, which is still legal under local law. It would take a legal case challenging the ruling in Pueblo vs. Duarte for that to happen.  

This latest assault on women’s reproductive rights is a cold, calculated maneuver by González-Colón. With her administration struggling and desperate for support, she’s willing to sacrifice gestating people’s autonomy to win over conservative and ultra-religious voters — clinging to even the faintest hope it will win her the 2028 elections.

By redefining the death of a fetus as murder, the law edges Puerto Rico ever closer to criminalizing abortion — even though the island has long upheld some of the most progressive reproductive rights laws in the Western Hemisphere. For the groups González-Colón is courting, this would be their crowning achievement.

Today, the reproductive rights many of us have taken for granted are under attack. The scenario is dire. 

Although abortion is still legal in Puerto Rico, many are asking for how long. This last law doesn't impact the right to an abortion directly, but it’s a big step towards the endgame: banning abortion. It puts the rights of gestating people in a sort of limbo and limits their autonomy over their lives.

Yet Puerto Rican women on the island, who make up 52.66% of the population, according to the U.S. Census, have been mostly silent. I don’t understand why we are not joining the fight with movements like Aborto Libre PR, Taller Salud, and other feminist groups, who have always been on the frontline of the abortion issue, and taking to the streets en masse.

To understand the silence, I went to Dr. Yari Vale, an OB/GYN at the Darlington Medical Associates clinic — the only one of the island’s four that does late second-trimester abortions — whom I have interviewed many times. She is at the frontline of the fight for reproductive rights. The first time I met her, a nine-pound bulletproof vest under her blue scrubs weighed down her petite frame. She was forced to wear it because of threats from anti-abortion activists.  

She explained that women take for granted the access we have to an abortion today and forget how many women lost their lives because of botched abortions before Roe. It seems the need to speak up will happen when it touches them. 

“The women who speak publicly and show their faces are usually those who have had abortions or have needed an abortion because of rape, incest, or their health and the health of the unborn child. Society classifies these abortions as ‘justified’,” she said. 

Is complacency why we allow right-wing religious nationalism and political maneuvering to erode reproductive rights we’ve held for decades? What will it take, beyond this bizarre feticide law, for women to finally say enough? Are we waiting for women to die again because their only recourse is a clandestine abortion that is not safe?   

“Many will die. This is the cost of turning your back on science, on statistics and medicine, and playing politics looking for votes from the conservative wing dominating public policy at the moment,” Dr. Vale said. 

Silence is not the answer. Women’s lives are at stake. It’s time to ride at dawn. 

A former News Director for Univision Puerto Rico and conflict correspondent, Susanne Ramírez de Arellano is a Columnist for The Latino Newsletter.

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