Jahanvi Agarwal
The Supreme Court turned down a woman’s plea to have her 26-week pregnancy medically terminated. The woman came before the court earlier in October and asserted that postpartum depression, horrible financial circumstances, and lactational amenorrhoea, a disease that prevents a patient from having menstruation, prevented her from being aware of her third pregnancy.
The pregnancy is not immediately dangerous to the woman’s life, and the foetus is healthy, according to a report from the AIIMS medical board, which the court relied upon in making its judgment.
The Court recorded the government’s submission to undertake the expenses of the delivery at an appropriate time. The Centre has further guaranteed that it will arrange for the adoption of the child if the parents so desire.
Under the Medical Termination of Pregnancy (MTP) Act, married women, special groups such as survivors of rape, and other vulnerable women such as the differently abled and minors, have a 24-week restriction on the time at which a pregnancy may be terminated.
The question of whether to allow the lady to terminate the over-26-week-old pregnancy was one that the Supreme Court had to resolve.
The problem emerged after one of the AIIMS medical board doctors, who evaluated the lady and submitted a report dated October 6 to the Supreme Court, wrote an email on October 10 claiming that the unborn has a good chance of surviving.