Birth Right

A landmark judgment finally acknowledges abortion is about women's autonomy/Gender

- PUJA SEN

In June, the Supreme Court of the United States overturned Roe vs Wade, a landmark decision that had made abortion a constitutional right in the country. Given this massive setback to reproductive rights in the world's oldest democracy, many in India took the opportunity to congratulate themselves on having more progressive abortion laws. The next month, however, the Delhi high court refused a 25-year-old woman the right to terminate her pregnancy because she was unmarried. The high court bench was interpreting the main abortion law the Medical Termination of Pregnancy Act, 1971-which allowed certain categories of women the right to abortion under very specific conditions. The judges argued that, in her case, aborting the foetus would be equivalent to "killing the child." On 29 September, the Supreme Court of India stepped in to expand the right to cover "unmarried women," whom the MTP Act did not until then explicitly include.

"Certain constitutional values, such as the right to reproductive autonomy, the right to live a dignified life, the right to equality, and the right to privacy have animated our interpretation of the MTP Act and the MTP Rule," the judgment states.

While this is a step in the right direction and is remarkable for upholding a comprehensive view of women's rights, it is in stark contrast to how India got its abortion law, which was not exactly created keeping women's reproductive autonomy in mind. Unlike in several other parts of the world, our abortion law did not emerge as a result of feminist interventions that placed women's political, social and sexual autonomy at their centre. Instead, in India, women's reproductive fate has always been tied up with government anxieties about population control. After Independence, family planning became a central plank in India's developmental ambitions and, to that end, the regulation of women's fertility was treated as a national imperative.