24-week-old deformed foetus can be aborted: Supreme Court

New Delhi: The Supreme Court on Monday permitted a 22-year-old woman from Mumbai, who is in her 24th week of pregnancy, to undergo abortion after medical reports found the foetus to be without a skull. The woman had found out about the defect in the 21st week of gestation, when she had a sonography done at a private clinic in Mumbai.

Under the Medical Termination of Pregnancy Act, 1971, abortion is legal in India only up to 20 weeks of pregnancy, provided it involves a risk to the life of the pregnant woman or it involves a substantial risk of the child being born with physical or mental abnormalities.

A bench comprising Justices S.A. Bobde and L. Nageswara Rao gave permission for the termination of the pregnancy of Meera Santosh Pal, taking note of the medical report submitted by a committee of doctors that the foetus was without a skull, and that it would not be advisable to proceed with the pregnancy. She had moved the apex court after her request for abortion was refused on December 20, 2016, when the defect was detected.

This is the fourth such a case brought to the Supreme Court’s notice in the past three years, and the court had given similar permissions in all such cases. In this case, the petitioner had also challenged the constitutional validity of the section of the MTP Act which prohibits a woman from aborting a foetus beyond the stipulated period of 20 weeks.

Senior counsel Colin Gonsalves, appearing for the woman submitted that the 20 weeks stipulation in the Act for a woman to avail of abortion services may have been reasonable when the provision was introduced in 1971 but has ceased to be reasonable today when technology has advanced and it is perfectly safe for a woman to abort even upto the 26th week and thereafter.

Counsel further argued that determination of foetal abnormality in many cases can only be done after the 20th week and by keeping the ceiling artificially low, women who obtain reports of serious abnormality after the 20th week have to suffer excruciating pain and agony because the deliveries that they are forced to go through.