Kamal Ghorui
On paper, Indian women have a sympathetic law to access abortion. In practice, it is a permission slip that the medical establishment frequently refuses to sign, often persuading courts to also follow its lead. But on Friday, Supreme Court really called out such overreach, by AIIMS no less. The bench of Justices Nagarathna and Ujjal Bhuyan underlined that neither the absence of foetal abnormality, nor the passage of time, negate a pregnant woman’s right to terminate her pregnancy. These are, actually, arguments used to deny women’s autonomy, as commonly as wrongly.
But if doctors can use such arguments to block a woman’s exercise of autonomy, it’s because the law doesn’t empower her to seek an abortion simply on the basis of deciding what’s best for her. While one medical practitioner must support her decision for a pregnancy up to 20 weeks, two are needed between 20-24 weeks, and beyond this, she must be supported by a specialised medical board. As in the above case, this support is often denied on the basis of foetal viability, a legal concept imported wholesale from American anti-abortion jurisprudence.
But this is only one of the many faces of medical stonewalling. A 27-year-old married mother of two pleading mental health, a 20-year-old female NEET aspirant pleading career, a 15-year-old rape survivor… The only thing common to all the women who are being denied access to abortion, is that they are women, Indian women.
Of course, she will fight on. Because she can’t just surrender control of her own body, inseparable from her mind. Even if that means a strange situation, where the courthouse, not the clinic, seems to have become the primary venue for reproductive health. The only way to escape this abnormal condition is to properly hand over the right to abortion to women. Right now, it very much vests with doctors instead.
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