: On a day when the Supreme Court allowed a rape survivor to abort her 24-week-old ‘abnormal’ foetus, the Delhi High Court directed the All India Institute of Medical Sciences to constitute a medical board to look into a similar plea filed by a minor victim who is 27-week pregnant.
Justice A.K. Pathak has asked AIIMS to constitute a board, comprising three gynaecologists and a psychiatrist, to see if the life of the girl, who is just 16-and-a-half-year-old, is in danger because of physical and mental stress caused by rape, illegal confinement and the pregnancy so caused.
Illegal custody
The girl was kept in illegal custody and raped by the accused, father of a child, for two years. She was released by the accused in March this year. The girl and her family discovered the pregnancy only in June after her health deteriorated.
After the girl moved the High Court last Thursday with her abortion plea, the police swung into action and caught the accused on Sunday. The man allegedly confessed to the police that he took the girl with him thinking she was an orphan.
Additional Standing Counsel for the Delhi government, Nandita Rao, said the court has included a psychiatrist in the medical board so that the mental condition of the girl could also be assessed. “The girl is in a very disturbed state,” Ms. Rao said.
The high court has relied on a Supreme Court judgment of 2015, as per which termination of pregnancy after 20 weeks can be allowed only if the life of the mother or the victim is under threat.
The Medical Termination of Pregnancy (MTP) Act bars termination of pregnancy after 20 weeks. However, Section 5 of the MTP Act provides that a pregnancy over 27 weeks can be terminated by a registered medical practitioner in a case where he is of opinion, formed in good faith, that the termination is immediately necessary to save the life of the pregnant woman.
The Gujarat High Court had recently expanded the scope of Section 5 of the MTP Act to also include threat to life of the pregnant woman due to mental distress caused by rape and the consequent pregnancy.
Another case
In the case before the Gujarat High Court, the girl had attempted suicide by consuming acid days after being raped. The doctors in that case had reported that continuance of pregnancy involves grave injury to the mother’s mental health.
Advocate Rao, who is also a human rights activist, said: “In India, the courts are very progressive and the MTP Act has been interpreted to protect the mother and not the child.”
“Our courts have held that abortion must be done even after 20 weeks if there is a threat to the mother, whereas in rest of the world it is all about the foetus,” she said, citing the example of Savita Halappanavar, an Indian-origin dentist in Ireland, who died after the doctors refused to terminate her pregnancy citing the law.
