SC To Consider Listing Woman’s Plea Seeking Termination Of 23-Week Foetus

Last Friday, the High Court, while hearing the plea, had observed that it virtually amounts to killing the foetus.

A Supreme Court bench comprising Chief Justice of India N V Ramana, Justice Krishna Murari and Justice Hima Kohli was told by the woman’s lawyer that the plea needed an urgent hearing keeping in mind the facts of the case.

“Just now we have been given papers. Let us see,” the bench said, according to a New Indian Express report.

Fact file

• On July 16, a Delhi HC bench refused to grant permission to the woman to abort the 23-week foetus, saying it is not permitted under the abortion law after 20 weeks for pregnancy arising out of a consensual relationship.
• The HC, however, sought the Centre’s response on the woman’s contention that the exclusion of unmarried women from being allowed to undergo medical termination of pregnancy up to 24 weeks, was discriminatory.
• The petitioner, a 25-year-old woman, who would complete 24 weeks of gestation on July 18, had told the court that her partner, with whom she was in a consensual relationship, had refused to marry her.
• She had stressed that giving birth outside the wedlock would cause her psychological agony as well as social stigma and she was not mentally prepared to be a mother.
• The HC, while dealing with the plea, had said the court cannot go beyond the statute while exercising its power under Article 226 of the Constitution.
• Before passing the order, the high court had suggested that the petitioner can be kept “somewhere safe” until she delivers the child who can subsequently be given up for adoption.
• “We will ensure that the girl is kept somewhere safe and she can deliver and go. There is a big queue for adoption,” the court had said. After the lawyer turned down the court’s suggestion, it said that it would pass an order on the petition.