SC Rejects Abortion Plea by HIV+ Rape Victim

New Delhi: A Supreme Court-appointed medical board on Tuesday ruled out the termination of 27-week pregnancy of an HIV positive woman who was raped on the streets of Patna.

The court ruled that she would have to carry the baby to term as abortion would threaten her life. It also ordered the Bihar government to pay her a compensation of Rs 3 lakh within four weeks.

In her plea, the 35-year-old woman said she was a destitute and had come to know about her pregnancy for the first time around the 13th week, and that too after she was rescued by an NGO and taken for a pregnancy test on January 26.

The woman said she had expressed her desire to terminate her pregnancy on March 4. However, it was only after she revealed to the superintendent of the shelter home that the pregnancy was the outcome of rape that she made attempts to have it terminated at the hospital on March 14.

According to the plea, the Patna High Court and Patna Medical College and Hospital refused to admit the woman owing to lack of identity proof. She was deserted by her husband, while her parents had refused to accept her, alleging that she was of an unstable mind, PTI reported.

The top court had on Monday pulled up the hospital for seeking the consent of her father and husband for terminating the pregnancy when she approached them in the 17th week, well within the legal embargo of 20 weeks under the Medical Termination of Pregnancy Act, 1971.

“How can her brother, father or husband be asked to give consent? It is she who will mother the child,” the bench had said.

The woman’s advocate, Vrinda Grover, had told the bench that her client deserved compensation from the Bihar government as she had gone to PMCH for terminating her pregnancy in the 17th week.

“She had said that she would terminate her pregnancy. The hospital asked for the consent of the father which he gave, though it was not required under the law,” she had said.

To this, the bench had asked Additional Solicitor Generals Tushar Mehta and PS Narsimha, “how is the father’s consent required?”

The apex court had earlier said it would not go into the orders of the high court which had held that the medical board’s report has stated that it would be unsafe for the life of the petitioner and there was a compelling responsibility of the state to keep the child alive.

Grover had said the high court had failed to appreciate that the woman was 35 years of age and completely fit to make her own reproductive choices without any interference.