Puerto Rico’s Gesture Toward Life: A Hollow Victory in the Shadow of Modernist Compromise
EWTN News reports Puerto Rico’s enactment of Law 183-2025 recognizing unborn children as “natural persons,” Law 166-2025 classifying fetal deaths during attacks on pregnant women as first-degree murder, and Law 122-2025 requiring parental consent for abortions involving minors under 15. Senate President Thomas Rivera-Schatz and Sen. Joanne Rodríguez-Veve champion these measures as historic pro-life achievements grounded in Christian values, while Law 63-2025 prohibits surgical or chemical “gender transitions” for those under 21. The legislators invoke Puerto Rico’s Christian heritage and quote John Paul II’s Familiaris Consortio, presenting these laws as restoring constitutional protections for life “from conception.” Yet this theatrical defense of life remains shackled to the very anti-Christian premises it claims to oppose.
The Illusion of Personhood Without Protection
Law 183’s recognition of fetal personhood deliberately avoids the necessary conclusion: Absolute prohibition of all abortion without exception. The legislation maintains abortion access under Puerto Rico’s penal code exceptions for maternal “health” – a term historically manipulated to justify abortion on demand. As Pius XI condemned in Casti Connubii: “However much we may pity the mother whose health and even life is gravely imperiled in the performance of the duty allotted to her by nature, nevertheless what could ever be a sufficient reason for excusing in any way the direct murder of the innocent?” (1930). The new law perpetuates the modernist heresy that civil authority may license homicide when biological circumstances prove inconvenient – a betrayal of the Church’s immutable teaching that “the civil law can never tolerate the killing of the innocent” (St. Thomas Aquinas, Summa Theologica II-II Q.64 A.6).
“The bill does not introduce anything that could prevent or delay such treatment [for medical emergencies],” Rodríguez-Veve clarified.
This admission proves the legislation’s fundamental impotence. By preserving the “health” exception – which the U.S. Supreme Court’s Doe v. Bolton (1973) expanded to include “all factors – physical, emotional, psychological, familial, and the woman’s age” – Puerto Rican legislators have codified abortion on demand while donning pro-life disguises. As the Holy Office decreed under Pius XII: “Direct abortion, even when therapeutic, is never permitted” (Acta Apostolicae Sedis 43, 1951, p. 838).
Parental Consent: Complicity in Child Sacrifice
Law 122’s parental consent requirement for minors’ abortions constitutes formal cooperation with evil. The legislation transforms parents into gatekeepers of the abortion industry rather than defenders of their children’s innocence. As Leo XIII warned: “The family may be regarded as the cradle of civil society, and it is in great measure within the circle of family life that the destiny of the State is fostered” (Rerum Novarum, 1891). By requiring parental signatures for abortion access, the State deputizes families to violate the Fifth Commandment – a diabolical inversion of the natural order.
The law’s rape exception compounds this sacrilege, implying that children conceived in violence deserve less protection. This contradicts Psalm 139: “Thou didst form my inward parts, thou didst knit me together in my mother’s womb,” and St. Augustine’s teaching that “the fruit of their womb could never be reckoned among the evils of punishment” (De nuptiis et concupiscentia I,15).
Gender Madness: Symptom of a Deeper Apostasy
While Law 63’s prohibition of pediatric “gender transitions” acknowledges biological reality, its limitation to minors under 21 reveals cowardice. The Church condemns all surgical or chemical self-mutilation as “gravely disordered” (Catechism of St. Pius X) regardless of age. By permitting these atrocities for adults, Puerto Rico embraces the modernist lie that individuals may recreate their God-given nature – the very heresy Pius X condemned as “the synthesis of all heresies” (Pascendi Dominici Gregis 39).
The legislation’s narrow focus ignores gender ideology’s roots in the conciliar church’s anthropological collapse. When Paul VI’s Gaudium et Spes declared man “the only creature on earth which God willed for itself” (24), it laid groundwork for the cult of radical self-determination now mutilating Puerto Rican youth. Rivera-Schatz quotes John Paul II’s Familiaris Consortio while ignoring how that document’s ambiguous language about “the human person’s self-realization” (11) fueled the disintegration he now pretends to resist.
The Naturalistic Trap
These laws exemplify the post-conciliar church’s failed strategy of battling secularism with secular tools. By grounding their defense of life in “human dignity” rather than Christ’s Kingship, Puerto Rican legislators reduce Catholic morality to bourgeois sentimentality. As Pius XI taught: “Nor is there any difference in this matter between the individual and the family, since the family is the foundation of the State” (Quas Primas 18). The absence of any reference to Puerto Rico’s duty to honor Christ as King – the only solution to societal decay (Quas Primas 1) – renders this legislation a Band-Aid on a gangrenous limb.
The politicians’ invocation of “Christian perspective” while upholding pluralist democracy constitutes the heresy of Americanism condemned by Leo XIII: “The underlying principle of these new opinions is that, in order to more easily attract those who differ from her, the Church should shape her teachings more in accord with the spirit of the age” (Testem Benevolentiae, 1899). Until Puerto Rico’s laws explicitly establish Catholicism as the state religion and prohibit all violations of divine law – as did its 1952 Constitution’s original Article II, Section 5 – these measures remain cosmetic adjustments to a sinking ship.
Conclusion: When Progress Is Regression
These laws constitute what St. Pius X called “the false show of virtue” – incremental reforms that normalize evil by conceding its foundational premises (Notre Charge Apostolique, 1910). By permitting any abortion, legitimizing parental complicity in child murder, and treating gender ideology as a pediatric issue rather than a satinic rebellion, Puerto Rico’s legislators have merely updated the blood sacrifice system to modern administrative standards. The true solution remains unchanged: public submission to Christ the King through the Social Reign of His Sacred Heart, enforced by Catholic civil authority – the sole path to “sweet peace” (Pius XI, Quas Primas 19). Until that occurs, no law can heal a nation that has abandoned its baptismal vows.
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UPDATE: Puerto Rico enacts law recognizing legal personhood of the unborn child (ewtnnews.com)
Date: 05.01.2026