NEW DELHI: Forcing a woman to carry her pregnancy violates bodily integrity and aggravates mental trauma, Delhi High Court said recently. It gave clean chit to a woman who medically terminated her 14-week foetus against the wishes of her estranged husband. He had filed a criminal case against her.Underscoring a woman’s autonomy to seek abortion in case of marital discord, Justice Neena Bansal Krishna said the wife could not be said to have committed an offence under Section 312 (causing miscarriage) of IPC in this case.
The court noted that the Medical Termination of Pregnancy Act did not require a pregnant woman to obtain the husband’s permission for termination of pregnancy, and the “golden thread” running through the enactment was the concern for “grave injury” to a woman’s physical as well as mental health.The woman had challenged a sessions court order which upheld her summoning before a magisterial court for the offence under Section 312.Evoking the “harsh reality of this misogynistic world”, the court said that in an accidental or unwanted pregnancy, the man might not be there to share the burden, and the woman would be “left to fend for herself”. It asserted that it is “only a woman who suffers. Such a pregnancy brings with it insurmountable difficulties, leading to grave mental trauma… There are social, financial, and other aspects immediately attached to the pregnancy of a woman, and if the pregnancy is unwarranted, it can have serious repercussions. It undoubtedly affects the mental health”.Allowing her plea, the court added that “not only is she left to fend for herself, but she is also almost always left to shoulder the responsibility of bringing up a child single-handedly, with no support forthcoming from any source”.
