HC permits abortion for teen rape survivor

Ahmedabad: Gujarat high court on Wednesday permitted a 16-year-old rape survivor from Ramol to undergo an abortion and directed Civil Hospital to terminate her pregnancy and take proper and treatment of her.

The victim and her father approached the HC for permission to terminate the pregnancy because it has advanced beyond 20 weeks. The Medical Termination of Pregnancy Act prohibits abortion beyond 20 weeks.

The family sought permission on the grounds that if the rape survivor is forced to continue her pregnancy, it will cause a lot of mental stress and grave injury to her mental health. Justice J B Pardiwala noted that the petitioners had not approached the concerned trial court first and directly moved the HC. However, he treated this as an exceptional case because the pregnancy appears to be advanced and sending the petitioners back to the sessions court would cause an unnecessary delay.

The HC sought the medical opinion of Dr Shirish Toshniwala of Civil Hosptial, who told the court that abortion in this case is not likely to endanger the life of the victim. After the medical opinion, the HC ordered that two doctors, along with Dr Toshniwala, should examine the victim again for the abortion. The doctors can proceed with their treatment, but only if they unanimously felt that it would not harm the girl’s health.

As this is a case of rape and the accused is behind bars, the HC also directed the medical superintendent to hand over the tissue from the foetus for DNA identification to the investigator concerned, to be used for forensic analysis.