Kochi: A pro-life group in Kerala on January 29 asked the federal government to withdraw its order extending the upper limit for permitting abortions. “The government order prepares conducive atmosphere for unbridled abortion,” laments the Pro-life Committee of the Kerala Catholic Bishops’ Council. “There is no difference between a child in pregnancy and a newborn,” the committee asserted after an emergency meeting at the Pastoral Orientation Centre in Kochi. Bishop Paul Mullaserry of Quilon, chairman of the bishops’ council’s family commission chaired the meeting.
Earlier, federal Minister Prakash Javadekar said the government has extended the upper limit for permitting abortions to 24 weeks, from the current 20 weeks,. Speaking to reporters in New Delhi on January 29, the minister highlighted the increase as a “progressive reform (that) gives women reproductive rights over their bodies.”
The news comes about four months after the government told the Supreme Court that the right to reproductive autonomy did not outweigh the state’s interest in protecting a fetus’s life and the 20-week limit could not be extended in a blanket manner.
“In a progressive reform and giving reproductive rights to women, the limit of 20 weeks of medical termination of pregnancy has been increased to 24 weeks,” Javadekar said, adding that this would ensure safe termination and give women reproductive rights over their bodies.
“This is important because in the first five months there are cases where the girl concerned doesn’t realize and has to go to court,” the minister added, saying that this was a demand from a section of women and, doctors. In September last year, responding to a plea that challenged the constitutional validity a law that fixed 20 weeks as the ceiling for an abortion, the government said the state was morally and duty-bound, as the guardian of its citizens, to safeguard the life of a fetus in the womb after it attains the stage of viability.
The government also claimed that studies had repeatedly found in cases where serious abnormalities were detected after the twentieth week, a pregnant woman who chose to carry the pregnancy to term were able to better cope with the loss, mental anguish, and trauma as compared to a woman who chose to terminate the pregnancy.
The petitioners had sought to extend the ceiling to 26 weeks. The Medical Termination of Pregnancy (Amendment) Bill (2020) to amend the Medical Termination of Pregnancy Act (1971) will be introduced in the next parliament session. The pro-life group says it will organize statewide protest programs in Kerala to demand the federal government’s new move. It says the Indian government enacted the Medical Termination of Pregnancy Act in 1971 that allowed abortion only up to 12 weeks under strict restrictions.
“Later it was extended to 20 weeks and now to 24 weeks, which will lead to female feticide and manslaughter,” the group warns. The pro-life group also said it would collaborate with various religious and social groups to organize rallies across Kerala with the “Save Life” message. “They deny the right to be born will tarnish the Indian culture that upholds life as supreme,” the meeting said.
