Sharp rise in cases before courts though doctors can decide on medical termination upto 20 weeks into gestation.
Every one in five cases brought before various high courts seeking permission for abortion is from a minor or a woman allowed under the law to terminate her pregnancy but is unable to exercise that right, a new study reports.
The two-part legal report, ‘Assessing the Judiciary’s Role in Access to Safe Abortion- II’, brought out by the Pratigya Campaign — a network of over 110 individuals and organisations working for access to safe abortion care in India — also records a sharp rise in the total number of abortion cases brought before high courts over the past few years. Between May 2019 and August 2020 — the study period of the latest report — there were a total of 243 cases across 14 high courts and one appeal before the Supreme Court. The previous report…