Doctors: Abortion best if there is threat to mom, kids’ life

Mumbai: Several city-based doctors and lawyers have called for an extension of the bar on the Medical Termination of Pregnancy Act (MTPA) to 24 weeks from the current 20 weeks. The medicos said that the babies with abnormalities, in many cases, have not been able to survive and that the government makes no special arrangement for their care, which puts the entire burden on the parents.

Talking to The Asian Age, Dr Nikhil Datar, a Goregaon based gynaecologist who helped the couple in filing the plea told, “In this case, the foetus has a life-threatening deformity in which the foetus’s brain was thinning. This was already visible in the scan and even if such a child is born, the baby wouldn’t have been able to lead a normal life.”

He further said, “The woman had undergone an ultrasound at a civic-run hospital, which is often overburdened with pati-ents, and so we were late in filing the plea. In some cases, abnormalities are detected later. What can be done in such a case?”

Doctors in the city have been pushing for a revision in the abortion deadline explaining that some abnormalities in the foetus are observed only after the legal deadline has passed.  

Dr Dilip Patil said, “A lot of care and nursing is needed after an abnormal baby is born.  But our government does not provide any help in such a scenario. Also, in some cases, the babies ultimately succumb to their abnormalities, which is an emotional loss to the parents. It would be much better if after the detection of the life-threatening abnormality, the foetus is aborted in a safe way.”