​Doctors decide: On legal abortion

With freedom comes great responsibility; decisions made as a consequence of any freedom must be informed by reasonable awareness of the fall out. In seemingly vesting reproductive autonomy with the woman, the Supreme Court might have edged out the essential role of a clinical review of the situation. The Court asked the Union government to amend the abortion law to remove the time limit on medical termination of unwanted pregnancies in the case of minor rape victims. The Bench of the Chief Justice of India, Surya Kant, and Justice Joymalya Bagchi made the observation while refusing to entertain a petition against an earlier Court decision allowing a 15-year-old survivor of rape to terminate the pregnancy during the 30th week. In the original judgment on the case, which was on curative appeal, the judges remarked that the right of the minor child to continue a pregnancy that is illegitimate must be considered, to safeguard a woman’s right to reproductive autonomy. The Bench of Justices B.V. Nagarathna and Ujjal Bhuyan had noted that the minor had shown a clear and consistent unwillingness to continue the pregnancy. The Court cannot compel any woman, much less a minor, to complete her pregnancy if she otherwise did not intend to do so, they said. They also indicated that if the legal routes were closed, women might take the dangerous path to quacks, risking life. However, counsel for the All India Institute of Medical Sciences stoutly opposed the termination, and the curative petition; leveraging the same safety consideration. Terminating the pregnancy at an advanced stage — 30 weeks — would be inimical to the health of the teenage mother. Currently, Indian law allows for the termination of pregnancy up to 24 weeks of gestation.

The entire argument hinges on gestational age, which, as an indicator of how far along the pregnancy is, is crucial to deciding whether an abortion would be safe. Most countries that have legalised abortion restrict the period of safe abortion to 24 weeks of gestation, primarily because of the negative implications for the life and health of the mother, after that. But, central to legal abortion is a medical assessment of risks. Will a child or her parents alone, with lay knowledge, be able to make a studied assessment of such risk? While the minor expresses her desire to be rid of a forced pregnancy, it is the role of her parents and the system to provide her with safe options, within the permissible period. Making an uninformed decision at this stage could be counterproductive, if it compromises her health or life, while allowing the right to bodily autonomy.