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The Ordo Iuris Institute has filed an amicus curiae brief before the Constitutional Tribunal of the Dominican Republic in case No. TC-01-2026-0014.

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The proceedings concern a direct petition challenging the constitutionality of Articles 106, 107, 108, 110, and 111 of the new Criminal Code (Act No. 74-25), which provide for the total criminalization of abortion.

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The petitioners are not seeking “abortion on demand,” but recognition of three grounds on which it should be permitted: danger to the mother’s life, lethal fetal defects, and pregnancy resulting from rape or incest.

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In its brief, Ordo Iuris defends two theses: that international law protects human life from conception, and that no rule of international law imposes on states an obligation to decriminalize abortion.

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The new Criminal Code is set to enter into force on August 3, 2026. The Constitutional Tribunal adjourned its ruling following the public hearing held on June 17, 2026.

The dispute before the Dominican Constitutional Tribunal

On March 30, 2026, the Constitutional Tribunal of the Dominican Republic received a direct petition challenging the constitutionality of the provisions of the new Criminal Code (Act No. 74-25, promulgated on August 3, 2025), which provide for the total criminalization of abortion — up to two years’ imprisonment for the woman and from three to thirty years for medical personnel performing the procedure. The petition was filed by Rosa Herminia Hernández, the mother of Rosaura Almonte Mateo, known as Esperancita, a teenager who died in 2012 for lack of medical care during a high-risk pregnancy, together with the organizations Alianza Cristiana Dominicana (ACD) and Católicas por el Derecho a Decidir República Dominicana (CDDRD), with support from, among others, Participación Ciudadana and the Technological Institute of Santo Domingo (INTEC).

The subject of the proceedings is a direct petition seeking a declaration that Articles 106, 107, 108, 110, and 111 of the new Criminal Code (Act No. 74-25), which provide for the total criminalization of abortion, are unconstitutional.

The first three of the challenged provisions define the scope of abortion’s criminality. Article 106 (abortion with the woman’s consent) provides for a sentence of two to three years’ imprisonment and a fine of nine to fifteen times the minimum public-sector wage for anyone who — by means of food, infusions, drugs, procedures, or any other means — brings about or participates in the termination of a pregnancy, even where the woman has consented. Article 107 (abortion self-induced by the woman) provides for a sentence of one to two years’ imprisonment and a fine of three to six times the minimum wage for a woman who induces an abortion in herself or consents to the use of abortive means or methods. Article 108, meanwhile, criminalizes abortion performed in the course of professional practice by physicians, nurses, pharmacists, and other healthcare workers, as well as midwives, providing for a sentence of two to three years’ imprisonment and a fine of nine to fifteen times the minimum wage. The penalties of up to 30 years’ imprisonment reported by some Spanish-language media do not concern these provisions but rather aggravated forms of the offense: abortion resulting in the woman’s death (Article 109 — up to 10 years) and abortion performed against the woman’s will (Article 110 — 10 to 20 years, or 20 to 30 years if it results in her death).

The petitioners are not seeking the introduction of abortion on demand, but an interpretive ruling recognizing the so-called three grounds for permissible abortion: an immediate threat to the mother’s life, lethal defects in the child, and pregnancy resulting from rape or incest. They are also seeking a declaration of invalidity of part of Article 110 of the new code, which, in their view, could be read as permitting termination of pregnancy without the woman’s consent, as well as clarification of the clause in Article 111 excluding medical personnel’s criminal liability, which they consider ambiguous.

Article 110 provides for penalties for forced abortion, “except in cases covered by the exclusion of liability set out in Article 111,” in which the new Dominican Criminal Code expressly excludes the criminal liability of actions taken to save a woman’s life. Under Article 111 of Act No. 74-25, termination of pregnancy performed by specialized medical personnel is not punishable if — in order to save the life of the mother, the unborn child, or both — all scientific and technical means available at the time were exhausted. This means that where the death of the child in the womb results from an intervention undertaken by medical personnel to save the mother’s life, such actions are not punishable. The Dominican legislature has therefore not placed the life of the unborn child above that of the woman — it has extended protection to both of these interests, permitting medical intervention under a state of therapeutic necessity.

The petitioners do not challenge the principle itself that actions saving the mother’s life should not be punishable; rather, they argue that Article 111 fails to clearly define the conditions under which it applies, which, in their view, creates legal uncertainty for both physicians and patients.

Among the entities that submitted documents in support of the petition were Participación Ciudadana, the Office of the United Nations High Commissioner for Human Rights (OHCHR), Human Rights Watch, Women’s Link Worldwide, the Committee of Experts of the MESECVI (CEVI), IPAS Latin America and the Caribbean, and the O’Neill Institute at Georgetown Law.

Opposition to the petition was voiced by a group of civil-society and Christian organizations acting as intervenors, including CODUE (the Dominican Council for Evangelical Unity), the Dominican Evangelical Alliance, the Archdiocese of Santo Domingo, Pro-Nación, and Fundación Valdez, defending the constitutionality of the provisions currently in force. Support for this opposition was also expressed by, among others, the Spanish foundation Abogados Cristianos (“Christian Lawyers”), which, like the Ordo Iuris Institute, filed an amicus curiae brief.

The public hearing took place on June 17, 2026; since June 18, 2026, the case has remained under deliberation, and the ruling has not yet been announced.

The petitioners’ arguments

The petitioners rely primarily on data on maternal mortality: in 2024, the Dominican Republic recorded 130 maternal deaths per 100,000 live births, one of the highest rates in the region, as well as on documented, named cases of women who died after being denied a life-saving abortion, including Esperancita, Adilka Félix, Carmen Dionelis Martínez Bonilla, and Winnifer Núñez Beato. They also point out that in 2024, 585 girls aged 11 to 14 became mothers, and that most pregnancies in this age group did not result from relationships to which the girls could have given informed consent.

The petitioners further raise the phenomenon of the so-called chilling effect: fearing criminal liability of up to thirty years’ imprisonment, medical personnel are said to delay intervention in obstetric emergencies until the situation becomes critical. It is in this context that they also challenge the ambiguity of Article 111 of the new code, which, they argue, does not clearly specify the conditions excluding medical personnel’s criminal liability.

The Ordo Iuris opinion: two theses

The Ordo Iuris Institute, which holds consultative status with the UN Economic and Social Council (ECOSOC), has filed an amicus curiae brief in the proceedings, stating that its interest in the case is strictly legal in nature. The brief rests on two theses.

The first thesis holds that international human rights law protects human life and recognizes life before birth as a legally protected interest. The Institute points out that Article 4(1) of the American Convention on Human Rights, to which the Dominican Republic has been a party since 1978, expressly provides that the right to life shall be protected by law, “in general, from the moment of conception,” which corresponds to Article 37 of the Constitution of the Dominican Republic. Ordo Iuris also cites the preamble to the Convention on the Rights of the Child, which refers to the need to afford the child “appropriate legal protection, before as well as after birth,” and Article 6 of the International Covenant on Civil and Political Rights, paragraph 5 of which provides that the death penalty shall not be carried out on pregnant women — which, in the Institute’s view, indicates an intent to protect the interest of the unborn child already within the text of the Covenant itself.

The second thesis holds that no rule of international law — whether treaty-based or customary — imposes on states an obligation to decriminalize or liberalize abortion. The Institute points out that the word “abortion” does not appear in any of the UN’s general human rights treaties, and that the Programme of Action of the 1994 International Conference on Population and Development, held in Cairo, a document signed by 179 states, expressly stipulates that “any measures or changes related to abortion within the health system can only be determined at the national or local level according to the national legislative process,” and that “in no case should abortion be promoted as a method of family planning.” Ordo Iuris also invokes the case law of the European Court of Human Rights (ECtHR), which has consistently held that the European Convention on Human Rights does not establish a right to abortion, and that even the existence of a European consensus toward broader access to it does not decisively narrow the state’s margin of appreciation.

The Institute stresses that the arguments advanced by the side calling for decriminalization rest almost exclusively on soft-law instruments: concluding observations and general comments of UN treaty bodies, and World Health Organization guidelines, which, in accordance with the 2018 conclusions of the UN International Law Commission and the advisory opinion of the International Court of Justice (ICJ) of May 21, 2026, do not have the status of binding treaty interpretation or an independent source of international obligations.

“The data cited by the petitioners — concerning maternal mortality and the situation of minor victims of sexual violence forced to continue their pregnancies — relate to real and serious social problems that deserve the legislature’s attention. In its brief, Ordo Iuris does not dispute the gravity of these problems, but rather addresses a separate legal question: whether international law imposes on the Dominican Republic an obligation to decriminalize abortion. In the Institute’s view, the answer to this question is no — the decision on this matter falls within the state’s sovereign regulatory competence, exercised within its own constitutional order, and is not an obligation arising from international commitments. The Constitutional Tribunal of the Dominican Republic, which has been in operation for almost fifteen years, will have to settle this case in the near future, as the new Criminal Code enters into force on August 3, 2026. The ruling will have implications extending beyond the Dominican Republic, forming part of a broader dispute, ongoing throughout the Latin American region, over the limits of constitutional courts’ competence vis-à-vis the legislature’s decisions on the protection of life,” notes Julia Książek, analyst at the Ordo Iuris Center for International Law.

Translated using Claude.ai

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Source of cover photo: iStock