Let women make the choice
The Supreme Court’s ruling is a setback to giving women autonomy over their bodies
The Supreme Court’s refusal on Tuesday to allow a woman to abort her 26-week-old unborn baby with Down Syndrome is a setback after its progressive womencentric January ruling. In this, it relaxed the 20-week ceiling on legal abortion to allow a woman to abort her 24-week baby with anencephaly, a life-threatening congenital defect . Children with Down Syndrome have lifelong disabilities because of impaired brain and physical growth and are predisposed to health problems like congenital heart defects, sleep apnea, and Alzheimer’s disease, among others.
India’s Medical Termination of Pregnancy (MTP) Act legalises abortions up to 20 weeks if there is threat to the mother’s life or her physical or mental health, or if the unborn baby has abnormalities, but many women end up using unsafe abortions methods because they don’t know where or who to go to because there are not enough legal providers.
Keeping in mind the limitations of the abortion law, the Union health ministry has proposed amendments to relax the cut-off period for legal abortions to 24 weeks and increase the number of skilled providers. The new amendments set no upper limit for abortions if the baby has “substantial foetal abnormalities,” which are yet to be defined in the rules that will be drafted after the bill is approved by Parliament. The proposed changes are with the Cabinet for approval before being tabled in Parliament. Whether Down Syndrome makes the cut as a “substantial foetal abnormality” is not known, but the right to abort is as much a rights issue as a medical one. Unwanted children get no State support, and neither do children with disabilities, who have to be cared for all their lives by their parents.
Women must have control over the decision-making related to their body and India must guard against a rights issue being hijacked by the moral police. Women keen on ending unwanted pregnancies find ways to do it, at risk to their health. Awareness that abortion is legal in India is low, ranging between a low 36% in Bihar and Jharkhand to a dismal 12% among Jharkhand youth in the age group of 15-24 years. Unsafe abortions kill 10 women in India each day, with an estimated 6.8 million women each year choosing unsafe methods to end unwanted pregnancies. Unsafe abortion is responsible for 8% of all maternal deaths in India, which makes it the third biggest cause of women dying of childbirth-related causes in the country. Strong laws and medical services that give women the right over their bodies can stop hundreds of thousands of these deaths.