{"id":208798,"date":"2022-09-30T19:01:51","date_gmt":"2022-09-30T13:31:51","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/blog.forumias.com\/?p=208798"},"modified":"2022-09-30T19:01:51","modified_gmt":"2022-09-30T13:31:51","slug":"supreme-courts-abortion-ruling","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/forumias.com\/blog\/supreme-courts-abortion-ruling\/","title":{"rendered":"Supreme Court\u2019s abortion ruling"},"content":{"rendered":"\n<p><b>Source: <\/b><span style=\"font-weight: 400;\">This post is based on the following articles:<\/span><\/p>\n<p><b>a. \u201c<\/b><b>Supreme Court\u2019s abortion ruling<\/b><b>\u201d <\/b><span style=\"font-weight: 400;\">published in<\/span><b> Indian Express on 30th September 2022.<\/b><\/p>\n<p><b>b. \u201c<\/b><b>Doctors need not report identity of minors seeking abortion, says Supreme Court\u201d <\/b><span style=\"font-weight: 400;\">published in <\/span><b>The Hindu on 30th September 2022.<\/b><\/p>\n<p><b>c. \u200b\u200b\u201d<\/b><b>Supreme Court axes 51-year-old curb, single women get equal abortion rights\u201d <\/b><span style=\"font-weight: 400;\">published in <\/span><b>The Hindu <\/b>on<b> 30th September 2022.<\/b><\/p>\n<h5><b>What is the News?<\/b><\/h5>\n<p><span style=\"font-weight: 400;\">The Supreme Court has held that all women, irrespective of their marital status, are entitled to safe and legal abortion till 24 weeks of pregnancy under the Medical Termination of Pregnancy (MTP) Act.<\/span><\/p>\n<h5><b>What was the case about?<\/b><\/h5>\n<p><span style=\"font-weight: 400;\">A petition was filed in the Supreme Court by a <\/span><span style=\"font-weight: 400;\">25-year-old <\/span><b>unmarried woman <\/b><span style=\"font-weight: 400;\">seeking an abortion of her 24-week pregnancy after the Delhi High Court declined her plea.\u00a0<\/span><\/p>\n<p><span style=\"font-weight: 400;\">The woman\u2019s case was that she wished to terminate her pregnancy as her partner had refused to marry her at the last stage.<\/span><\/p>\n<p><span style=\"font-weight: 400;\">The petitioner also argued that the continuation of the pregnancy would involve a risk of grave and immense injury to her mental health.<\/span><\/p>\n<h5><b>What does the current MTP Act say on this?<\/b><\/h5>\n<p><span style=\"font-weight: 400;\">Currently, the MTP Act mandates the medical opinion of a doctor to terminate pregnancy up to 20 weeks while the advice of two doctors is needed for pregnancies between 20 and 24 weeks.<\/span><\/p>\n<p><span style=\"font-weight: 400;\">However, only certain categories of women are allowed to terminate their pregnancies in this extended time period of 20 to 24 weeks.<\/span><\/p>\n<p><span style=\"font-weight: 400;\">The certain categories include the cases of sexual assault, rape or incest, <\/span><span style=\"font-weight: 400;\">women whose marital status changed during pregnancy, mentally-ill women, <\/span><span style=\"font-weight: 400;\">women with physical disabilities, <\/span><span style=\"font-weight: 400;\">women with foetal malformation and <\/span><span style=\"font-weight: 400;\">women with pregnancy in humanitarian settings or disaster or emergency situations as may be declared by the Government.<\/span><\/p>\n<h5><b>What was the court&#8217;s judgment?<\/b><\/h5>\n<h6><b>On unmarried women seeking abortion<\/b><\/h6>\n<p><span style=\"font-weight: 400;\">The Supreme Court ruled that all women, regardless of their marital status are entitled to safe and legal abortion till 24 weeks of pregnancy.\u00a0<\/span><\/p>\n<p><span style=\"font-weight: 400;\">The court declared that prohibiting single or unmarried pregnant women from pregnancies\u00a0<\/span><span style=\"font-weight: 400;\">between 20 and 24 weeks from accessing abortion while allowing married women with the\u00a0<\/span><span style=\"font-weight: 400;\">same term of pregnancy to access the care was violative of the right to equality before the law <\/span><span style=\"font-weight: 400;\">and equal protection (Article 14).<\/span><\/p>\n<p><span style=\"font-weight: 400;\">The court also held that reproductive autonomy required every pregnant woman to have the <\/span><span style=\"font-weight: 400;\">intrinsic right to choose to have or not have to undergo an abortion without any consent or <\/span><span style=\"font-weight: 400;\">authorisation from a third party.<\/span><\/p>\n<h6><b>On minors seeking abortion<\/b><\/h6>\n<p><span style=\"font-weight: 400;\">The Supreme Court exempted the registered medical doctors from disclosing to the police the identity of minors who have come in for the abortion.<\/span><\/p>\n<p><b>Note<\/b><span style=\"font-weight: 400;\">: Currently, a registered medical practitioner (RMP) is obliged under Section 19(1) of the POCSO Act to report to the police when a minor approach him or her for an abortion.<\/span><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>Source: This post is based on the following articles: a. \u201cSupreme Court\u2019s abortion ruling\u201d published in Indian Express on 30th September 2022. b. \u201cDoctors need not report identity of minors seeking abortion, says Supreme Court\u201d published in The Hindu on 30th September 2022. c. \u200b\u200b\u201dSupreme Court axes 51-year-old curb, single women get equal abortion rights\u201d&hellip; <a class=\"more-link\" href=\"https:\/\/forumias.com\/blog\/supreme-courts-abortion-ruling\/\">Continue reading <span class=\"screen-reader-text\">Supreme Court\u2019s abortion ruling<\/span><\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":10317,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"jetpack_post_was_ever_published":false,"footnotes":""},"categories":[1566,7965,9],"tags":[10500,10498],"class_list":["post-208798","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-daily-factly-articles","category-miscellaneous-daily-factly-articles","category-public","tag-indian-express","tag-the-hindu","entry"],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"","views":{"total":0,"cached_at":"","cached_date":1704954954},"jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/forumias.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/208798","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/forumias.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/forumias.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/forumias.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/10317"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/forumias.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=208798"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/forumias.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/208798\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/forumias.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=208798"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/forumias.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=208798"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/forumias.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=208798"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}