SC allows minor rape survivor to abort pregnancy

New Delhi: The Supreme Court on Wednesday allowed a 13-year-old rape victim, a student of Class 7, from Mumbai to terminate her 31-week-old pregnancy, preferably on September 8 at JJ Hospital.

A three-judge bench of Chief Justice Dipak Misra and Justices Amitav Roy and A.M. Kanwilkar passed this order taking note of the medical report filed by a board of doctors of JJ Hospital, set up by the court, that the foetus could be medically terminated.

In a brief order, the bench said, “Keeping in view the age of the victim, the trauma she faced, we allow her to terminate her pregnancy preferably on September 8 and that she should get herself admitted to the hospital on Thursday.”

Solicitor general Ranjit Kumar, appearing for the Centre, referred to the medical report and said both termination and continuation of the pregnancy was not safe, but efforts could be made to terminate the pregnancy. Section 3(2)(b) of the Medical Termination of Pregnancy (MTP) Act prohibits abortion of a foetus after 20 weeks of pregnancy.

The minor girl’s mother, through advocate Sneha Mukharjee, had moved the apex court seeking its permission to terminate the pregnancy of her daughter. The 13-year-old’s family resides in Charkop, Mumbai. Her father is a street vendor, while the mother is a homemaker. The child stays with her parents. On August 13, she was released from Asha Dan shelter home in Byculla.

The petitioner told the court that the pregnancy was detected only in late August, when her parents took her to a doctor to check whether her sudden obesity was caused by thyroid. A sonography showed that she was 27 weeks pregnant at that time. The child had not informed her parents that she was raped.

Precious time was lost in this process, she said and prayed for termination of the unwanted pregnancy, as the child could not bear the trauma.