The Bombay High Court on Wednesday passed landmark directions after hearing three petitions filed by women seeking permission to medically terminate their pregnancy. The length of their respective pregnancies had exceeded 20 weeks. Division bench of Justice AS Oka and Justice MS Sonak held that a registered medical practitioner may medically terminate pregnancy which has exceeded 20 weeks, without permission from the High Court, only when he is of the opinion, that the termination of such pregnancy is immediately necessary to save the life of the pregnant woman.
Court further held that in a case where attempts are made to medically terminate a pregnancy in good faith to save the life of the mother and still the child is born alive, the State will have to assume parental responsibility, if the parents of such child are unwilling to or are genuinely not in a position to care for such child. Elaborating the reasoning behind the judgment the Court said that this is because several such petitions are being filed in this Court seeking urgent reliefs. In matters of this nature, every passing day produces irretrievable changes in the status of the petitioners and foetus which they carry. These changes invariably have a direct impact upon the reliefs applied for in such petitions.
Abortion laws in India are regulated by Medical Termination of Pregnancy Act, 1971. It only allows gynaecologists or obstetric specialists to carry out acts of termination of pregnancies. MTP Act allows pregnancies to be brought to an end in the first three months with the approval of only a single registered medical specialist. But, if the duration of pregnancy has crossed five months, the approval of at least 2 medical specialists is needed. The termination in case the duration of 5 months has passed, is approved on the following grounds under section 3 of the MTP Act – progeny conceived from an act of sexual harassment, the child suffering from any disability detected before his/her birth, mother’s life is at risk etc.
MTP Act has been complemented with several rules and regulations over the years. For instance, the Union government in 2003 came up with the “MTP Regulations”, which is to be followed in all centrally administered territories or Union Territories (UTs). According to the aforementioned regulations, all the Registered Medical Practitioner (RMP), must maintain abortion records and submit them to the Chief Medical Officer (CMO). The union government also came up with the Comprehensive Abortion Care (CAC) Training and Service Delivery Guidelines, 2010, amended in 2014 which aims to train medical practitioners and staff to clamp down upon the deaths of mothers from un-prescribed induced miscarriage practices.
However, the problem with the MTP Act is that it allows abortion up to 20 weeks. It is to be noted that the MTP Act came up in the 1970s. Technology has made huge strides these days. It is not only possible to detect defects in pregnant women late into the pregnancy, but the abortion process too has become much more streamlined and safer, even late into the pregnancy. However, as the MTP Act does not take into account these technological advancements, the application of the law has been scratchy at best.
Therefore, in conclusion, while India’s abortion laws are indeed meant to help emancipate its women-folk, its application and substantive elements suffer from some serious follies. There is a need to update MTP Act to bring it in consonance with modern day technology and medical methods.
By-
Deeksha Gupta
Student Reporter- INBA
