Puerto Rico is seldom in the news, but the island’s status is commanding new attention. Over the weekend, passions flared on both sides of the political aisle over the performance by musical artist Bad Bunny at the Super Bowl. This will not be another take on that show, other than to lament that there will likely be little sustained focus on stories that really matter about Puerto Rico, a long-time territory of the United States whose future should be of much keener public interest than it is for most people.

Based on an informal survey of recent internet posts, there seems to be some confusion about Puerto Rico’s relationship to the United States. To recap the major features of that special relationship:

• Puerto Rico is not a foreign country. It is part of the United States and has been so since it was captured by the United States during the Spanish-American War in 1898.
• The people of Puerto Rico are citizens of the United States, after their designation as such by Congress in 1917.
• As residents of Puerto Rico, a territory of the United States that is neither a state nor a component of another state, Puerto Ricans living on the island are not counted for purposes of the Electoral College and are not eligible to vote in federal elections, including for President of the United States.
• When, as citizens of the United States, residents of Puerto Rico move to one of the 50 states or the District of Columbia and register in accordance with the election laws of that jurisdiction, they are eligible to vote in federal elections and for President of the United States.
• Puerto Ricans resident on the island can and do participate and vote at the national conventions of the major U.S. political parties under those parties’ own rules.
• Spanish is the most commonly spoken language in Puerto Rico and has been so since the territory was acquired, a fact bearing no relation to its population’s citizenship status.
• An elected delegate from Puerto Rico, called a “resident commissioner,” can vote on procedural matters and in committee in the U.S. House of Representatives, as well as cosponsor legislation, but is ineligible to vote on the House floor.

To say the least, this state of affairs is somewhat discordant and has contributed to misimpressions about Puerto Rico that the Super Bowl did nothing to dispel. A few decades back, I had the privilege of serving as the primary researcher on a book about Puerto Rico’s status as more or less a colony of the United States. The book was titled “Pay to the Order of Puerto Rico,” since its focus was primarily on how the island’s unique status damaged its self-governance and resulted in its economic exploitation by mainland actors. The book was written by prominent conservatives who had concluded that Puerto Rico should, in all justice, be either the 51st state or an independent nation. Remaining a territory was positive neither for residents of the island nor U.S. taxpayers, the authors concluded.

Tensions over this question build and recede and have, on one occasion, led to violence against Washington, D.C. On March 1, 1954, four Puerto Rican nationalists opened fire from the gallery of the House of Representatives and wounded five members of Congress, one seriously (none was killed). The assailants were captured, charged, and convicted, remaining in federal custody until 1978 and 1979, when they were pardoned by President Jimmy Carter and returned to Puerto Rico.

This type of incident was atypical of the controversy over Puerto Rico. More common is the response of Puerto Ricans in defense of the United States. Nine Puerto Ricans have won the Congressional Medal of Honor for their service in foreign wars. Puerto Ricans, according to pr51st.com, have disproportionate rates of service in our Armed Forces.

Today, it is clear that statehood is the preference of the majority of Puerto Ricans. They do not wish to break away and join the company of Latin American nations. Even Bad Bunny (though he has provided public support to a candidate from Puerto Rico’s independence party and sported an independence flag briefly, as well as the official banner of the territory, during his halftime show) has not been vociferous about endorsing separation from the United States.

Puerto Rico has conducted seven plebiscites on its relationship to the United States. The first of them was in 1967, and four others have been held since 2012. In the most recent ballot, last year, just 12% of voters on the island chose independence, a doubling from 2012 but still quite small. Just shy of 30% opted for “free association” with the United States, and 58.6% cast their ballots for statehood. The “free association” option would represent not a mere continuation of Puerto Rico’s current status, but a political arrangement negotiated between the island and the United States that could address topics like the role of the U.S. military, foreign policy concerns, and use of U.S. currency.

In this 250th anniversary year of the founding of our Republic, expansion of the United States has been under a sometimes volatile discussion. Recent polls out of Canada and Greenland suggest little fondness in those two nations for the idea of joining, or being annexed to, the United States. That is clearly not the case for Puerto Rico. It is both American and pro-American. It is also something else of increasing urgency across the Western Hemisphere: it is pro-life.

Last year was a banner year for pro-life legislation in Puerto Rico. Like other jurisdictions, Puerto Rico was subject for nearly a half century to Roe v. Wade, which upended all legislative enactments limiting abortion in the United States and its territories. Prior to that, Puerto Rico had its own sad history, having legalized abortion in 1937 and setting in place what were called Malthusian clinics. Seldom are the facilities funded by population activists so candidly named. A master’s thesis published last year at the Chapman University Digital Commons details how neo-Malthusian interests in the United States led to one-third of Puerto Rican women being sterilized between the 1930s and 1970s. During that same timeframe low-income Puerto Rican women were subjected to a much-criticized trial of the first birth control pill led by Gregory Pincus and John Rock. The prevalence of serious side-effects and lack of informed consent, in addition to the targeting of poor women, were the chief complaints.

This history has had a cumulative effect on families in Puerto Rico. Abortion has technically been limited by law, barred unless a pregnancy poses a threat to a woman’s life or health. But “health” in practice encompasses mental health, and the Guttmacher Institute, formerly a Planned Parenthood affiliate, labels the island’s law “abortion on request.” Between 1950 and 2023, total births in Puerto Rico dropped by more than 78% to an annual total of 18,641. Abortions, meanwhile, dropped 40.6% to a reported total of 5,059 in 2023. The abortion rate is below the U.S. national average, but among all U.S. territories and states, Puerto Rico has the lowest total fertility rate of 1.18 children per woman. According to the Pew Research Center, the population of the island has declined by 600,000 just since 2004.

Grim figures like these are increasingly a global problem, affecting countries of diverse political structure and religious heritage. Puerto Rico is overwhelmingly Catholic, as is much of Latin America. The region has a higher percentage of nations than other continents that affirm the sanctity of human life by law. Advocates of legal abortion have focused their fire on the region, having success in their efforts frequently by judicial rulings where electoral outcomes have not been availing. Mexico, Colombia, and Argentina have suffered court rulings in the past five years that have voided or severely limited the application of pro-life laws. Other nations have stood stoutly for the right to life, including El Salvador, Costa Rica, Guatemala, Nicaragua, and Honduras.

Puerto Rico, of course, is not a Latin American nation, but it is American by any measure and occupies a prime seat in the northeast portal of the Caribbean Sea. In 2025, thanks to the persistence of strong majorities in the Puerto Rican legislative assembly, the territory has adopted laws that establish that:

• “Every human being has legal personality and capacity from the moment of conception and is a subject of law for all purposes that are favorable to him or her” (this includes rights of inheritance, in personal injury lawsuits, health insurance, and other areas). The House vote on final passage of the measure was 40-12 and the Senate vote was 18-6.
• “A crime against a pregnant woman that results ‘in the death of the unborn child at any stage of gestation within the mother’s womb’ will be treated as first-degree murder.”
• “At least one guardian must give informed consent if a minor girl [under the age of 15] is seeking an abortion.”

Under Puerto Rico’s existing law, abortions remain within the decisional-capacity of the woman if they can be classified as therapeutic, an historically elastic term, but clearly the new safeguards point in the direction of stronger protection for a human being with the same rights as any other.

With the Super Bowl behind us for another year, attention can turn to the next mega-event, the semiquincentennial of the Declaration of Independence. I well remember the bicentennial when a college friend and I perched on the bluffs around the harbor in Newport, Rhode Island on July 4, 1976, amazed at the fleets of Tall Ships gracing the seascape. In 2026, I will instead be looking forward, maybe even to the possibility of an informed national debate over the status of a territory that very much wants to be a full partner of the United States and is not represented by the lyrics of Bad Bunny.