India's Abortion Law Is Humane

Wellbeing of pregnant women and unborn children is the supreme concern of the current legislation.

- Dr P.H. Reddy

India is one of the countries which legalised abortion early. In 1971, Indian Parliament passed Medical Termination Of Pregnancy Act legalising abortion of certain pregnancies.

Medical termination of pregnancy (MTP) is a more humane term for abortion. Nowhere in the entire Act is the term “abortion” mentioned. It is always called medical termination of pregnancy or simply pregnancy termination.

The MTP Act has a manifest and a latent objective. The manifest objective is to terminate pregnancy if it involves risk to the life of the pregnant woman or grave injury to her physical or mental health or if there is substantial risk that if the child were born, it would suffer from such physical or mental abnormalities as to be seriously handicapped.

The latent objective is to reduce the number of live births and control population growth. In a country like India, with a gargantuan population and rapid population growth, the latent objective is also important.

If the length of pregnancy does not exceed 12 weeks, the opinion of one qualified registered medical practitioners is enough regarding the risk involved to the pregnant woman and to the child to be born.