Govt mulls to enhance legal limit for abortion to 24 weeks

The last month judgement of Bombay High Court rejecting the plea of Nikita Mehta seeking permission to abort her 24-week pregnancy due to diagnostically detected heart problem of her foetus, which later turned into miscarriage had born a new debate: “Is there any need to update 37-year old ‘Medical Termination of Pregnancy (MTP) Act’, 1971 in the present high-tech scenario when advanced technology is available to abort the foetus safely?”

After the court’s ruling, the Union Health Minister Anbumani Ramadoss had ensured public to review the old MTP Act by setting up a committee of experts and on the report of that committee government would take further action.

•   E-mail Article
•   Printer Friendly
•   Text-Size    

Now, Health Ministry has asked the Women and Child Development Ministry to co-chair the appointed committee of experts set up under the leadership of Health Secretary, Naresh Dayal to review the 37-year old MTP Act for seeking any possibility of raising time period of abortion from existing 20-week to 24-week. The report of the appointed committee is expected to come by next February, as per sources.

Health Ministry believes that this matter is not only related to health, but also to child and woman, and WCD can attract several dimensions of issues related to women and child on this topic that would help the reviewing committee in making proposals.

MTP Act, 1971 was implanted almost four-decade ago, when no such high-tech facilities were present, while today as medical experts believe, there are various advanced technologies such as Level-II ultrasound machine available to detect any abnormality at the advance stage of pregnancy between 22 and 24 weeks.

According to MTP Act 1971, a pregnancy can be legally aborted only if its continuance is a threat to the woman’s physical or mental health, or if there is a substantial risk of neo-natal baby to develop any physical or mental abnormalities or be seriously handicapped.