Puerto Rico’s Republican governor on Thursday signed a bill that amends a law to recognize an unborn baby as a human being, which opponents argued could eventually lead to outlawing abortion in the U.S. territory.
Gov. Jenniffer González said in a statement that the measure “aims to maintain consistency between civil and criminal provisions by recognizing the unborn child as a human being.”
The amendment, in Senate Bill 923, altered an article within Puerto Rico’s Penal Code that defines murder.
The government said that the amendment complements a law affirming that it would be first-degree murder if a suspect intentionally and knowingly kills a pregnant woman, resulting in the death of the conceived child at any stage of gestation.
The legislation was named after Keishla Rodríguez, a pregnant woman who was killed in April 2021. Her partner, former Puerto Rican boxer Félix Verdejo, was convicted in the killing and received two life sentences.
Supporters of the law said it was designed to provide consistency between civil and criminal codes and focus on harsher punishments for the murder of pregnant women and that it was unrelated to abortion, but critics argued that it opens the door to eventually criminalizing the procedure in Puerto Rico, which remains legal.
“A zygote was given legal personality,” Rosa Seguí Cordero, an attorney and spokesperson for the National Campaign for Free, Safe and Accessible Abortion in Puerto Rico, told The Associated Press. “We women were stripped of our rights.”
