Mumbai: Bombay High Court has issued a notice to the state and Centre on a petition that seeks a comprehensive standard operating procedure (SOP) for medical termination of pregnancies beyond 24 weeks with a wider role for medical boards so that vulnerable women do not have to approach the court.
Under the Medical Termination of Pregnancy Act, termination is permitted up to 24 weeks and beyond it is restricted to situations involving risk to a woman’s life or severe foetal abnormality. On Friday, Chief Justice Mahesh Chandra Tripathi and Justice Advait Sethna directed notice to be issued and posted the matter on Oct 9.
MLSI has challenged a clause in the state’s June 3, 2024, GR which mandates that for pregnancies past 24 weeks involving vulnerable categories (rape survivors, minors and persons with disabilities) where there is no abnormality, “such cases may be intervened in court. ” The PIL petition states that the absence of an SOP has led to conflicting judicial pronouncements, absence of clear guidelines on foeticide (intracardiac injection) versus pre-term delivery and unresolved legal, ethical and financial liabilities when a viable foetus is born alive following a court order. Also, “criminal exposure, professional stress and a chilling effect on the medical fraternity” were exemplified recently in an FIR against a Satara gynaecologist who performed a late-term termination and a contempt notice by Supreme Court against AIIMS doctors refusing to terminate a 30-week pregnancy. The PIL has called out the “shifting of executive burden” from medical boards and offloading it entirely on to HC. “If SOPs are clear, the patient need not go to the court every time pregnancy crosses 24 weeks,” it states. non-adversarial evaluation by a medical board at any gestational stage, a rape survivor at the exact same stage of gestation is pushed into protracted legal battle. ” The PIL has urged HC to quash and set aside the impugned clause “as ultra vires the parent MTP Act While a woman carrying a foetus with “substantial abnormalities” can access a swift.
The present framework fosters “absolute arbitrariness. Among other prayers, it has urged the state to bear expenses for the “tertiary NICU of a child born alive out of a court-ordered late-term MTP.