Supreme Court announces that all women can have an abortion up to 24 weeks into pregnancy

The Supreme Court on Thursday ruled that all women are entitled to secure and legal abortion and that the difference between married and unmarried women in this matter is unconstitutional. The Apex court stated, unmarried women also are entitled to are seeking an abortion after being pregnant for 20-24 weeks arising out of a consensual relationship. A three-judge bench headed by Justice D.Y. Chandrachud additionally dominated that below the Medical Termination of Pregnancy Act, the definition of

rape must consist of marital rape. The Apex Court ruled that a woman’s marital status can’t be used to disclaim her the right to abortion, while additionally ruling that unmarried women have the proper to terminate an unwanted pregnancy within 24 weeks. The court stated depriving single or unmarried women of the proper to abort an unwanted being pregnancy is a violation of essential rights. The Bench had reserved judgment in the case on twenty third of August. The judgment turned into cheer by reproductive rights activists, who stated the court had ensured that the regulation does not discriminate and expands the proper to secure and felony abortions to unmarried girls. “Now, all of the rights that married women have, unmarried women, can even have,” stated Aparna Chandra, a partner professor of regulation at the National Law School of India, who works on reproductive

justice. In its judgment, the court “breaks away from the stigma this is connected to unmarried women getting pregnant,” she stated.

Abortion has been legal in India because 1971 under the Medical Termination Pregnancy Act. In 2021, the regulation became amended to permit certain categories of women — which includes married women who had been divorced or widowed, minors, rape victims, or mentally ill women — to reap abortions as much as 24 weeks, elevating it from the preceding 20 weeks. But the adjustments did not consist of unmarried women, causing many to question why the regulation differentiated the idea of marital status. 

“The artificial distinction among married and unmarried women cannot be sustained. Women have to have the autonomy to have free exercising of those rights,” Justice Dhananjaya Y. Chandrachud stated. The court stated denying single women the same access to abortion violated the proper equality earlier than the law below India’s Constitution. Abortion rights had been contentious trouble throughout the world, particularly after the U.S. Supreme Court in June overturned Roe. Wade’s judgment had set up a constitutional proper to abortion in the country. 

“Internationally, judgments affect every other — and that is a landmark one as it acknowledges a woman’s proper over her body and reproductive freedom regardless of what governments and legislatures may say,” stated Supreme Court lawyer Karuna Nundy. The ruling got here after a single woman in a consensual relationship was denied an abortion by a lower court in July due to the fact she was past 20 weeks in her pregnancy. Later that month, the Supreme Court allowed her to get an abortion as much as her twenty-fourth week of pregnancy, and on Thursday prolonged that proper to all women. The “selection to have or not to have an abortion is borne out of complex life circumstances, which only the woman can pick on her very own terms without external interference or influence. Reproductive autonomy calls for that each pregnant lady has the intrinsic proper to pick to go through or not to go through abortion without any consent or authorization from a 3rd party”. 

Stating that “the proper to reproductive autonomy is carefully related with the proper to physical autonomy… The outcomes of an unwanted pregnancy on a woman’s body as well as her thoughts can’t be understated… A mere description of the side effects of pregnancy can’t possibly do justice to the visceral photo of forcing a woman to preserve an unwanted pregnancy. Therefore, the selection to hold the pregnancy to its complete period or terminate it’s far firmly rooted in the right to bodily autonomy and decisional autonomy of the pregnant lady”, it stated. 

“The proper decisional autonomy additionally means that women may also choose the course of their lives. Besides physical outcomes, undesirable pregnancies which women are forced to hold to period may also have cascading outcomes for the rest of her existence by interrupting her education, her career, or affecting her mental well-being,” it stated.