Unmarried Women Get The Right To Abortion
Editor-in-Chief of indiacommentary.com. Current Affairs analyst and political commentator.
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By Sunil Garodia
First publised on 2022-07-22 04:04:01
About the Author
Editor-in-Chief of indiacommentary.com. Current Affairs analyst and political commentator.
View all posts by this Author
In a
landmark decision, the Supreme Court expanded the scope of the abortion law to
make it legal for unmarried and single women to terminate unwanted pregnancies.
Saying that denying abortion rights to this category of women will mean denying
them the rights guaranteed in Article 21 of the Constitution, the bench said
that it will also go against the intent of the legislation.
In the
instant case, the petitioner appealed to the court to allow her to terminate
her pregnancy that was in an advanced stage as her partner had abandoned her.
The court said that it would be contrary to the intent of the law if the petitioner
was made to suffer an unwanted pregnancy and she should not be denied the same
only because she was unmarried. The court allowed the woman to terminate her pregnancy
if a medical board at AIIMS certified that it was safe to abort as she was in
an advanced stage of pregnancy.
The court
recognized that the MTP Act does not expressly allow this right to unmarried or
single women. It said that "while Section 3 travels beyond conventional relationships
based on marriage, Rule 3B of the MTP Rules does not envisage a situation
involving unmarried women, but recognizes other categories of women such as
divorcees, widows, minors, disabled and mentally ill women and survivors of sexual
assault or rape. There is no basis to deny unmarried women the right to
medically terminate the pregnancy when the same choice is available to other
categories of women." It categorically said that "excluding unmarried women and
single women from the ambit of the statute goes against the purpose of the
legislation."
The court
went on the explain that it was never the intent of Parliament to limit the
application of the provisions of the Medical Termination of Pregnancy Act (MTP
Act) to only married and certain other classes on women. That is why, the court
said, the word 'husband' in Explanation 1 of Section 3(2) of the MTP Act was
replaced with the word 'partner' in an amendment carried out in 2021. "Explanation
1 expressly contemplates a situation involving an unwanted pregnancy caused by
the failure of any device or method used by a woman or her partner for the
purpose of limiting the number of children or preventing pregnancy. The
parliamentary intent is clearly not to confine the beneficial provisions of the
MTP Act only to a situation involving a matrimonial relationship."
It is
heartening to note that while the US Supreme Court had recently denied women
the right to abortion, the Indian Supreme Court has widened the scope of the
law to allow the right to unmarried and single women. A large number of such
women faced an extremely traumatic period if they had an unwanted pregnancy. Many
such women lost their lives or suffered from other complications as they
explored options from tablets to quacks or unlicensed abortion centres as they
were denied access to legal and safe abortion. This Supreme Court decision will
allow them to terminate unwanted pregnancies legally, in time and safely.
