SC orders medical test on late abortion plea

NEW DELHI: The Supreme Court directed Mumbai’s KEM hospital on Friday to set up a medical board to examine an alleged rape victim who wants to terminate her 24-week pregnancy, which is prohibited by law.

The 26-year-old woman had petitioned the top court to allow her to abort the foetus, which is malformed, saying she became pregnant after her former fiancé raped her and went back on his promise of marriage.

Besides, she said the foetus suffers from anencephaly, a serious birth defect in which a baby is born without parts of the brain and skull, but doctors refused to abort it as her pregnancy has surpassed the 20-week legal ceiling.

The Medical Termination of Pregnancy Act, 1971, prohibits an abortion after 20 weeks of pregnancy. The law allows a woman to abort her pregnancy only after medical opinion confirms “it is necessary to save the mother’s life”.

But it fails to provide any remedy in case of an abnormal foetus. The singularity of her case prompted the court to ask the premier state-run hospital in Mumbai to constitute an expert panel of doctors by Saturday and submit a report during the next hearing on July 25.