Puerto Rico Faces New Threats to Abortion Rights

Nearly three years after the U.S. Supreme Court overturned Roe v. Wade, abortion rights across the country have been dangerously eroded. But the impact on reproductive rights didn’t affect just the 50 states: The case also altered the landscape in Puerto Rico, a U.S. territory in the Caribbean made up of about 3.2 million people.

Reproductive rights are still intact in Puerto Rico, as there are legal grounds to support them. The Penal Code considers abortion a crime, but not if it’s performed in the interest of the pregnant person’s health, and the El Pueblo de Puerto Rico vs. Pablo Duarte Mendoza case established that that standard encompasses both the physical and mental health.

But the overturning of Roe v. Wade, the 1973 case that guaranteed the constitutional right to an abortion, has appeared to galvanize conservative legislators and religious, anti-abortion groups in their efforts to limit existing abortion rights in Puerto Rico. Advocates say that many of those initiatives mimic the efforts being made in U.S. states.

Legislation proposed in Puerto Rico is a “copy-paste of U.S. policies,” according to Verónica Colón Rosario, executive director of the gender equity fund Fundación de Mujeres en Puerto Rico.

Also starting to emerge are anti-abortion or fake clinics on the island that appear to be “pregnancy crisis centers” and actually encourage pregnant people not to terminate a pregnancy, said Isabel Ramos-Hernández, a member of the abortion rights group Aborto Libre Puerto Rico.

Ramos-Hernández has worked heavily on educational campaigns with Aborto Libre Puerto Rico, a coalition founded in 2018 comprising individual members and representatives from various organizations. Part of this work has been the “Conversabortos,” informal conversations about reproductive rights in Puerto Rico at the community level.

A New Wave of Challenges

Funding for the coalition’s “Conversabortos” was provided by Fundación de Mujeres en Puerto Rico, which was created five years ago as a fund dedicated to advancing gender equity. Colón Rosario said that so far, the foundation has distributed $2 million in grants to various causes. That being said, funding appears to be under threat, activists told Prism.

“Many of the female leaders of these organizations are being affected by the current crisis. They’re very scared,” Colón Rosario said. “We have a genuine worry that the social justice work will be limited because Puerto Rico depends too much on federal funds because philanthropy doesn’t come here like it does to other U.S. states.”

Private philanthropy dollars are also not reaching Puerto Rico as they do U.S. states. In 2018, a piece published by Hispanics in Philanthropy argued that “for many mainland U.S. foundations, Puerto Rico somehow isn’t ‘American’ enough for regional or local funding. But it’s also not ‘foreign’ enough to qualify for international charities.”

Another factor that activists mentioned is the 2024 elections, which resulted in more conservative politicians in the Puerto Rican legislature who are working quickly to change existing policies. For example, Sen. Joanne Rodríguez Veve, from the political party Proyecto Dignidad, proposed a bill in 2024 to make it so that children ages 15 and under would need approval from a parent or guardian to get an abortion. The bill wasn’t approved. But in the first months since taking office this year, Rodríguez Veve revived the bill, and it has now been approved. While government officials have discussed and established that permission should be waived in cases of abuse, the bill has been a cause of concern for activists.

The quick pace at which anti-abortion proponents are unveiling projects is a tactic, Colón Rosario said.

“Their strategy—like the Trump administration is doing right now—is to throw a bunch of things at the same time so people enter into shock. The culture of shock is to frustrate you to the point of decreasing social justice, decreasing the activism work, and then they end up winning.”

The Fight Continues

To combat burnout and the potential emotional toll of this work, Nirvana González Rosa, a member of Aborto Libre Puerto Rico, advocated for finding time for laughter and pleasure, which she described as being acts of resistance. Solidarity and mentorship from more experienced activists are two elements that Ramos-Hernández said are part of what the coalition also does to help its members.

González Rosa encouraged people interested in supporting human rights to contact the coalition because there is work to be done. Amid the new efforts toward conservatism and the work of legislators to limit reproductive rights, the fight isn’t new.

“I’ve been a feminist activist for more than 40 years, since 1979. And this is circular, so the world—not just us—the world is moving towards the right again,” she said.

Moving forward, Colón Rosario recommended two courses of action for people who want to defend reproductive rights. First is to confront the injustice and stand on the right side of history; this means having difficult conversations with loved ones about the repercussions of these measures. And second is for Puerto Rico to develop its philanthropy further. She encouraged people to think about philanthropy in a different way: “Philanthropy isn’t charity. Philanthropy is an investment to move forward the social justice agenda.”

“We’re ready, and we’re organizing. We already were, and now we’re organizing more and for us, this is a right that isn’t negotiable,” Ramos Hernández said. “We’ll fight however is necessary to protect so that abortion continues to be legal, accessible, and safe for all people. So there won’t be more turning back.”

Prism is an independent and nonprofit newsroom led by journalists of color. We report from the ground up and at the intersections of injustice.