SC allows abortion of 25-week foetus

New Delhi, 4 July 2017:

The Supreme Court on Monday allowed a 33-year-old woman from West Bengal to abort her 25-week foetus suffering from severe cardiac ailments, observing that a woman’s right to her bodily integrity was sacrosanct.

The law bans abortion beyond 20 weeks of pregnancy unless a court allows it in specific circumstances, including those that involve serious risks to either the baby or the mother.

In January, the top court had allowed a 24-week pregnant woman from Maharashtra to abort her baby suffering from a life-threatening condition. On Monday, the court relied on a medical board’s report that advised the termination of the pregnancy as a “special case”, saying that if the pregnancy continued, there would be a threat of “mental injury” to the woman.

The doctors further advised that even if the infant was born alive, it would have to undergo multiple, “complex” surgeries for severe cardiac ailments, and added that the chances of mortality were high. A bench headed by Justice Dipak Misra allowed the woman’s prayer, saying “it was her choice”.

The court then ordered Kolkata’s IPGMER SSKM Hospital to carry out the procedure to terminate the pregnancy “forthwith.”

The petitioner’s lawyer, Sneha Mukherjee, said that her client suffered immense mental and physical anguish as a result of the “unreasonable” 20-week restriction on abortion under Section 2(b) of the Medical Termination of Pregnancy (MTP) Act.

On May 25, during a foetal echocardiography conducted on the petitioner, it was suspected that the foetus suffered from “Tetralogy of Fallot”, a combination of four impairments in the heart.

This was confirmed during a more comprehensive test conducted five days later. However, by then, the woman had already crossed the 20-week mark and was thus unable to abort the foetus. Mukherjee claimed her client was anguished at being forced to continue her pregnancy while being aware that her baby may not survive.

The woman had submitted paediatric pulmonologist Devi Shetty’s report that said that the foetus was suffering from a severe form of cardiac impairment called “pulmonary atresia”, and there was a high possibility of permanent brain damage.

WHAT THE LAW SAYS

The law bans abortion beyond 20 weeks of pregnancy unless a court allows it in specific circumstances, including those that pose risks to the baby or the mother. DNAindia