A Law Written in 1884, Still Deciding Who Lives

In August 2026, a new Dominican penal code took effect — the first full rewrite of a criminal code that had stood since 1884. President Luis Abinader called it "not the ideal, but the best possible." For the women's rights groups who had spent years lobbying him, it was something else: a betrayal. Before his re-election, Abinader had signaled support for decriminalizing abortion in limited cases. After winning, he didn't push for the change. The new code keeps the total ban fully intact.

The Dominican Republic criminalizes abortion without exception — not for rape, not for incest, not when a fetus cannot survive outside the womb, not even when continuing a pregnancy will kill the woman carrying it. A woman who has an abortion faces up to two years in prison. A doctor or midwife who performs one faces five to twenty years. In practice, the law doesn't just punish abortion — it makes doctors afraid to treat any pregnancy complication quickly, because the line between "miscarriage care" and "abortion" can cost them their freedom.

"We continue to fight." — Sergia Galván, feminist activist, after the penal code's final approval

For more than a decade, a broad coalition — feminist organizations, LGBTQ+ groups, and even a coalition of Christian women called Alianza Cristiana Dominicana — has rallied around one narrow, specific demand: las tres causales, the three exceptions. Not full decriminalization. Not abortion on demand. Just three situations in which a woman should not have to risk prison, or her life, to get care. In 2021, the Coalition for the Life and Rights of Women camped outside the National Palace for weeks to force the issue onto the legislative agenda. It has come back again and again — through the 2024 criminal code debates, through nationwide protests, and now through the code that took effect in 2026 without the exceptions they asked for.

These are not rare, extreme cases — they are two names out of what advocates estimate are well over a hundred preventable maternal deaths a year. Natalia Mármol of the Coalition for the Life and Rights of Women has put it plainly: the three causales are not a radical ask. They are the minimum required so that women don't die in hospital beds, and so that girls impregnated through rape or incest are not sentenced to carry those pregnancies to term.

The same penal code that preserved the total ban also reduced penalties for sexual violence within marriage and stripped sexual orientation from its list of protected categories — changes LGBTQ+ advocates say will be used against them. It also exempted churches from criminal liability, which activists worry could shield religious leaders from prosecution for abuse or cover-ups. The pattern is consistent: a code that expanded protection in some places and quietly withdrew it in others, written by a government that had the exceptions on the table and chose not to take them.

The demand now is the same as it has been for over a decade: pass the three causales. Not because it solves everything, but because it is the floor beneath which no government should let its own citizens fall.