Context
The Supreme Court said it may loosen the restrictive grip of a 51-year-old abortion law which bars unmarried women from terminating pregnancies which are up to 24 weeks old, saying the prohibition was “manifestly arbitrary and violative of women’s right to bodily autonomy and dignity”.
Background
MTP Act: The Medical Termination of Pregnancy Act of 1971 and its Rules of 2003 prohibit unmarried women who are between 20 weeks to 24 weeks pregnant to abort with the help of registered medical practitioners. |
Analysis
What is women’s ‘bodily autonomy’?
The sad reality
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Reproductive choice in India
Barriers to Accessing Safe Abortion Services in India
Despite the Medical Termination of Pregnancy Act, 2021 allowing all women in India to abort a foetus up to 20 weeks of pregnancy and 24 weeks for women under special conditions, thousands have their reproductive rights denied and physical autonomy curtailed, mainly by the:
Need of Bodily Autonomy & Integrity:
According to United Nations Population Fund (UNFPA) “Where there are gender-discriminatory social norms, women’s and girls’ bodies can be subject to choices made not by them, but by others, from intimate partners to legislatures. When control rests elsewhere, autonomy remains perpetually out of reach”. |
Conclusion:
Depriving women and girls of bodily autonomy is wrong. It causes and reinforces inequalities and violence, all of which arise from gender discrimination.
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