A number of cases have come to the Supreme Court and to other courts in the recent past in which women whose pregnancies have run over 20 weeks have asked for permission to abort. The legal maximum limit of abortion in India is 20 weeks.
Some of those cases have been rather delicate, as was shown in a recent abortion attempt by parents of a 10-year-old rape victim. She arrived at the top court’s door when she was already 26 weeks pregnant. Formalities (such as forming a medical board) took up time, and when she was finally denied permission to abort (because it was too dangerous for her health) and she underwent a C-section, she was 32 weeks into her pregnancy.
In view of such cases, the Centre has made a bold move. At the Supreme Court on Thursday (August 31), before the bench of Justices SA Bobde and L Nageshwara Rao, the counsel for the Centre sought directions from the court for the formation of a body/board which will expeditiously deal with such kind of matters by considering the all statutory viability.
The counsel also cited an order of August 25, by the bench of Justices Madan B Lokur and Deepak Gupta in another case (Nipun Saxena vs Union of India Ministry Of Home Affairs) in which the court had issued notice to the Medical Council of India and medical boards of all the states and Union Territories regarding the early consideration of cases in which the termination of pregnancy is sine qua non in lieu of Section 5 of MTP Act 1972.
The reference to this by the government counsel came up in a case on Thursday in which a woman (mentioned as Mrs A) in her 20s has been pregnant for about 24 weeks and wants an abortion.
At the last hearing the court ordered the formation of a medical board, comprising a well-known gynaecologist and obstetrician to examine her. This was to decide if MTP would be life-threatening for the petitioner.
On Thursday the petitioner’s counsel submitted that procurement and service of that detailed medical report, mentioning the current health status of woman and her child, has not taken place, because of the non-availability of the man/husband who has begotten her pregnant.
That is a legal pre-requisite. In the case of the 10-year old who finally delivered (both are healthy), her maternal uncle had raped her and gotten her pregnant. That man has been arrested. In this case the legal pre-requisite has not been fulfilled.
This has presented a piquant situation for the petitioner. At that point the Centre’s counsel put forth the centre’s idea.
On Thursday the apex court granted time as wanted by the petitioner, to file a medical report.
The case is likely to be listed next week.
—India Legal Bureau