supreme court moots verdict to help unmarried women gain ‘bodily autonomy’ under MTP Act
08-08-2022
By Admin
supreme court moots verdict to help unmarried women gain ‘bodily autonomy’ under MTP Act
supreme court moots verdict to help unmarried women gain ‘bodily autonomy’ under MTP Act
- The Supreme Court on Friday said it may loosen the restrictive grip of a 51-year-old abortion law which bars unmarried women from terminating pregnancies which are up to 24 weeks old, saying the prohibition was “manifestly arbitrary and violative of women’s right to bodily autonomy and dignity”.
- Similar situations for unmarried women: The court noted that the Rules permit termination of pregnancies of up to 24 weeks in seven specific categories, including survivors of rape or sexual assault, minors, in case of physical disabilities and fetal malformation.
- The court said that unmarried women whose pregnancy is over 20 weeks may have also conceived in a similarly vulnerable situation.
- Pregnancy within and outside marriage: The legislature has not just used the word ‘husband’. It has also used the word ‘partner’.
- So the legislature is not just concerned about women who undergo pregnancy within marriage, but outside marriage too.
- Medical risk is the same for both married and unmarried women
- Sec 3 of MTP Act: Section 3 (when pregnancies may be terminated by registered medical practitioners) of 1971 Act allows women who are less than 20 weeks’ pregnant to terminate if they had conceived due to the “failure of a family planning device”.
- The law presumes that such a pregnancy would be a cause of mental anguish and constitute a “grave injury to the mental health of the pregnant woman”.
- Q. Though women in post-Independent India have excelled in various fields, the social attitude towards women and feminist movement has been patriarchal.” Apart from women education and women empowerment schemes, what interventions can help change this milieu? (UPSC 2021)