New Delhi: The Supreme Court on Monday permitted a 22-year-old woman from Mumbai who is in her 24th week of pregnancy to undergo abortion after medical reports found the foetus to be without a skull. The woman had found out about the defect in the 21st week of gestation when she had a sonography done at a private clinic in Mumbai.
Under the Medical Termination of Pregnancy Act, 1971, abortion is legal in India only up to 20 weeks of pregnancy provided it involves a risk to the life of the woman or it involves a substantial risk that if the child were born it would suffer from such physical or mental abnormalities.
A Bench of Justice S.A. Bobde and L. Nageswara Rao gave the permission for termination of the pregnancy of Ms. Meera Santosh Pal, taking note of the medical report submitted by a committee of doctors from KEM hospital that the foetus was without a skull and it would not be advisable to proceed with the pregnancy. She had moved the apex court after her request for abortion was refused on December 20, last when the defect was detected.
It was the same hospital that had given its opinion in the rape survivor’s case in July 2016, when such permission was given. This is the fourth such case to be brought to the Supreme Court’s notice in the past three years and court has given similar permission in all such cases.
In this case the petitioner had also challenged the constitutional validity of Section 3 (92) (b) of the MTP Act of 1971 which prohibits a woman from aborting foetus beyond the stipulated period of 20 weeks.
Senior counsel Colin Gonsalves, appearing for the woman, submitted that the 20 weeks stipulation in the Act for a woman to avail of abortion services may have been reasonable when the provision was introduced in 1971 but has ceased to be reasonable today when technology has advanced and it is perfectly safe for a woman to abort even up to the 26th week and thereafter.
The counsel further argued before the court that determination of foetal abnormality in many cases can only be done after the 20th week and by keeping the ceiling artificially low, women who obtain reports of serious abnormality after the 20th week have to suffer excruciating pain and agony because the deliveries that they are forced to go through.
