Short answer. Yes. The Revised Penal Code grades intentional abortion by how it was done: using violence on the woman draws the heaviest penalty, doing it without violence but without her consent is next, and doing it with her consent carries the lightest penalty of the three.
What the law says
Any person who shall intentionally cause an abortion shall suffer: 1. The penalty of reclusion temporal, if he shall use any violence upon the person of the pregnant woman. 2. The penalty of prision mayor if, without using violence, he shall act without the consent of the woman. 3. The penalty of prision correccional in its medium and maximum periods, if the woman shall have consented.
Revised Penal Code, Article 256 — Intentional Abortion. Read the full provision →
Three penalties, not one
Article 256 does not treat intentional abortion as a single offense with a single punishment. It sets out three separate penalties, and which one applies depends entirely on how the abortion was brought about. The heaviest is reclusion temporal, reserved for cases where the offender used violence on the pregnant woman herself. The law does not require the violence to be the actual cause of the abortion in a medical sense — it is enough that force was used on her person while intentionally causing the abortion. This is the circumstance the statute treats as most serious, and the penalty reflects that.
Without violence, but without consent
If no violence was used on the woman, but the abortion was still carried out without her consent, the penalty drops to prision mayor — still a serious prison term, but markedly lighter than reclusion temporal. This covers situations where the offender acted through deception, taking advantage of the woman while she was unconscious, or some other means that did not involve physical force, yet still ignored her will entirely. The law distinguishes force from mere absence of consent, and punishes them differently even though both deny the woman any say in what happened to her.
When the woman consented
The lightest of the three penalties, prision correccional in its medium and maximum periods, applies when the woman herself consented to the abortion but someone else intentionally caused it. Consent does not make the act lawful — it remains a crime under Article 256 — but it changes the penalty bracket, since the law reserves its heaviest sanctions for acts done against the woman's will or by force. The person who consents may also separately answer under other provisions of the Code dealing with an abortion a woman brings about for herself.
Why the distinction matters
The practical effect of Article 256 is that the presence or absence of violence, and the presence or absence of the woman's consent, are not background facts — they decide which penalty bracket a case falls into. A prosecution for intentional abortion has to establish which of the three circumstances applies, because reclusion temporal, prision mayor, and prision correccional carry very different consequences, from the length of imprisonment to eligibility for certain post-conviction remedies. Anyone facing or considering a complaint under this article should treat the question of how the act was done as central, not incidental, to the case.