February 22, 2025

Forced Abortion Amounts To Mental Cruelty, Is Ground For Divorce, Rules Punjab & Harayan HC

By Linus Garg
First publised on 2022-09-29 15:21:10

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Linus tackles things head-on. He takes sides in his analysis and it fits excellently with our editorial policy. No 'maybe's' and 'allegedly' for him, only things in black and white.

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The Punjab & Haryana HC granted divorce to a woman whose husband had forced her to have an abortion against her wishes. Ruling that motherhood is innate, the court said that forcible abortion amounted to mental cruelty and would be a ground for divorce. The court set aside the Hisar family court order that had dismissed the woman's plea for divorce on these grounds.

An unwanted pregnancy is a dilemma for couples. But if a woman chooses to keep the child, forcing her to abort will definitely fall under the scope of mental cruelty. It is not the woman's fault alone that she conceived. In any case, once she has conceived and wants to keep the child, no excuse - not even the husband's plea in the instant case that he had no means to support the child - is enough to deny her the choice of keeping the child and enjoy the joys of motherhood. If the husband was as impoverished as not being able to bear the burden of raising the child, he should have taken necessary precautions to prevent pregnancy. Forcing the wife to abort the child was cruelty on his part.

Apart from the mental trauma of being made to abort the child, in the instant case the complications of a forced abortion meant that the woman had gynaecological complications resulting in her not being able to conceive in the future. The court was right in terming it as mental cruelty on part of the husband and granting the divorce.