SC allows rape survivor to abort 24-week-old foetus
In a landmark judgement, the Supreme Court on Monday granted liberty to a rape survivor to terminate her 24-week-old abnormal foetus.
The court ruled that disallowing the victim to terminate her pregnancy would put her life at risk.
The 26-year-old had challenged the constitutional validity of the Medical Termination of Pregnancy Act that which prohibits termination of pregnancy after 20 weeks even if there is a fatal risk to the mother and foetus.
A medical board was set up at King Edward Memorial College and Hospital in Mumbai on Friday to examine the condition of an alleged rape survivor who wanted to abort her foetus.
A bench, comprising Justice J S Khehar and Justice Arun Mishra, had directed the medical board to examine the woman and submit its report back on Monday.
The court had on Wednesday last accepted the matter for urgent hearing after senior advocate Colin Gonsalves said that in the present case, the life of the woman was in grave danger.
The petitioner had said that her ex-fiancé had raped her on the false promise of marriage. The foetus suffers from anencephaly (a serious birth defect in which a baby is born without parts of the brain and skull) but the doctors had refused to abort it since it will be illegal.
