A victim of sexual assault cannot be compelled to continue her unwanted pregnancy, the Bombay High Court has said while allowing a 12-year-old girl to abort her 28-week pregnancy despite an adverse report from medical experts.
If forced to give birth to a child against her wish, the court would be depriving her of the right to decide the “path of her life”, it said.
A medical board, after examining the girl, had opined that the process of termination of pregnancy would be highly risky, considering the girl’s age and the stage of the growth of the fetus.
A bench of Justices Nitin Sambre and Sachin Deshmukh, however, held in its June 17 order that abortion will have to be permitted. “This court cannot force the victim to carry her pregnancy against her wishes, as in such an eventuality, the state would be stripping her of the right to determine the immediate and long term path of her life,” the HC said.
“We are equally required to be sensitive to the fact that a woman can become pregnant by choice irrespective of her marital status, however, in case of unwanted or incidental pregnancy the burden invariably falls on the pregnant woman/victim,” the court said.
The girl had been sexually assaulted by her uncle following which a case was registered against him. The girl’s father moved the high court seeking to terminate her pregnancy, the result of the sexual assault.
The court, while permitting the termination of pregnancy, said all safety protocol shall be followed during the procedure to ensure no complication arises. The procedure should be carried out by a medical team including a paediatric surgeon, the HC said.
Under the Medical Termination of Pregnancy Act, abortion after 20 weeks of pregnancy is prohibited unless allowed by a court.
