The Supreme Court on Monday declined the request of a woman seeking to terminate her 26-week-old pregnancy, The Indian Express reported. The three-judge Bench headed by Chief Justice DY Chandrachud said that the medical report showed the foetus had no abnormality.
Noticing that the pregnancy had crossed 24 weeks, the court stated that permitting the petitioner to carry on with the termination of pregnancy would violate Sections 3 and 5 of the Medical Termination of Pregnancy Act.
The 27-year-old married woman, who already has two children, had pleaded that the current pregnancy was unplanned.
She had said that her family income is insufficient to support another child and that she is herself not in the right mental frame, having been under medication for postpartum depression after the birth of her second child.
According to LiveLaw, the bench directed that the cost of all medical procedures in the matter would be borne by the State and the petitioner would have the ultimate say on whether she wanted to keep the child upon being born or give it up for adoption.
In an earlier hearing, the Supreme Court had said that a child cannot be killed, and its right has to be balanced with that of the mother.
“Do you want us to tell doctors at AIIMS to stop the heart of the foetus,” the Supreme Court had asked.
The court also refused to hear a challenge to the upper limit for medical termination of pregnancy as 24 weeks by means of an intervention in the proceedings.
The court stated that the challenge to the existing law would be addressed through separate proceedings, while the ongoing petition shall remain a matter exclusively between the petitioner and the state.
