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Puerto Rico’s governor on Thursday signed a bill amending the law to recognize the unborn as a person, which opponents say could eventually lead to abortions on the US territory.
Gov. Jenniffer González said in a statement that this measure “aims to maintain harmony between social and criminal conditions by recognizing the unborn child as a person.”
The amendment, in Senate bill 923, changed the article within Puerto Rico’s Penal Code that defines murder.
The government said that this amendment is in line with the law which states that it can be a first offense of murder if the suspect intentionally kills a pregnant woman, which leads to the death of a pregnant child at any stage of pregnancy.
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Jennifer González, governor of Puerto Rico, signed a bill amending the law to recognize the unborn as a person. (AP Photo/Alejandro Granadillo)
The law is named after Keishla Rodríguez, a pregnant woman who was murdered in April 2021. Her partner, former Puerto Rican boxer Félix Verdejo, was convicted of murder and sentenced to two life terms.
Supporters of the law say it is designed to provide consistency between civil and criminal codes and focuses on tougher punishments for the killing of pregnant women and that it is unrelated to abortion, but critics say it opens the door to eventually doing the procedure in Puerto Rico, which remains legal.
“The zygote is given legal personality,” Rosa Seguí Cordero, lawyer and spokesperson for the National Campaign for Free, Safe and Accessible Abortion in Puerto Rico, told the Associated Press. “We women were deprived of our rights.”
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Gov. Jenniffer González said that this measure “aims to maintain harmony between the social and criminal conditions by recognizing the unborn child as a person.” (RICARDO ARDUENGO/AFP via Getty Images)
Dr. Carlos Díaz Vélez, president of the College of Surgeons of Puerto Rico, asserts that the new law will lead to “medical insecurity,” where doctors may refuse to treat complicated pregnancies for fear of being prosecuted for murder.
“This will bring complex clinical decisions to the field of criminal justice,” he told the Associated Press, adding that it would bring “catastrophic consequences.”
Díaz said the amended law also allows a third party to intervene between a doctor and a pregnant woman, which violates privacy laws. He also said that new rules and regulations will have to be implemented.
“The program is not ready for this,” he said.
Critics of the law say it opens the door to eventually criminalizing abortion in Puerto Rico. (KAREN BLEIER/AFP via Getty Images)
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Opponents of this law also say that this amendment was passed without public consultation.
“There is no doubt that this measure was not analyzed sufficiently before its approval and it leaves an unacceptable space of ambiguity in terms of human rights,” Annette Martínez Orabona, executive director of the American Civil Liberties Union in Puerto Rico, told the Associated Press. “The leadership that makes the laws failed to fulfill their responsibility to the people, as well as the governor.”
The Associated Press contributed to this report.
