Panel orders abortion in 24 hours with consent

THIRUVANANTHAPURAM: The full bench of the State Commission for the Protection of Child Rights has ordered that the medical termination of pregnancy of a sexual abuse victim should be carried out within 24 hours of the written consent given by the victim.

The Commission's order has come in response to the "inordinate delay" in performing abortion on a 13-year-old victim in the Medical College here recently.

Mahila Samakhya Society, which runs the Nirbhaya home for victims of sexual abuse, had blamed the investigating officer (Poonthura circle inspector) and the district Child Welfare Committee for the delay.

The CWC, which has to first counsel the victim and then officially direct the medical officer to conduct the abortion, had withheld the direction for a couple of days. The charge was that "religious concerns" were behind the delay.

The district CWC is headed by a priest. In Christian canon, abortion is morally evil. The Poonthura CI, it was said, took days to finally agree to ask for a DNA test on the foetus.

“It is normal for the accused to deny responsibility for the crime. He will either claim that he is innocent or that he was only one of the many who had abused the victim. A DNA test is perhaps the only way to fix accountability,” a Nirbhaya source said.

Finally, it took more than a week after the victim and her parents gave a written consent for the MTP to be conducted.

The Medical Termination of Pregnancy Act 1971 specifically allows a registered medical practitioner to terminate a pregnancy of 12 to 20 weeks in the case of an unwanted pregnancy caused by rape or by the failure of a birth control device.

The Supreme Court, too, had upheld the right of the victim. “There is no doubt that a woman's right to make reproductive choices is also a dimension of 'personal liberty' as understood under Article 21 of the Constitution of India,” a 2010 order said.

“It is important to recognise that reproductive choices can be exercised to procreate as well as to abstain from procreating,” the apex court added.