The sudden concern for 'foeticide' and 'beating heart' can tilt the concern in favour of the foetus — who is accorded personhood — while the full-fledged adult woman as a person is ignored. A similar tilt led to the overturning of women's right to abortion in the US in 2022

Written by Amar Jesani, Sunita Sheel Bandewar
October 24, 2023

In less than a year, pregnant women were made to go through two extremes by the Supreme Court. On September 29, 2022, a three-judge bench of the SC headed by the Chief Justice of India (CJI), in a case seeking permission for abortion, took a strongly principled stand by pronouncing that, “The right of every woman to make reproductive choices without undue interference from the state is central to the idea of human dignity. Deprivation of access to reproductive healthcare or emotional and physical well-being also injures the dignity of women” (X vs Principal Secretary, MoHFW, GoI).

The optimism due to the recognition of self-determination to abortion lasted for just about a year. On October 16, another three-judge bench headed by the CJI, refused a woman the choice to undergo abortion because her pregnancy had crossed the 24 weeks of gestation — the foetus was medically normal and her mental health condition, though severe, was pronounced to be manageable. The court seems to have privileged a narrow medical opinion against the principled position of giving primacy to the choice of abortion by the pregnant woman.

Continued: https://indianexpress.com/article/opinion/columns/abortion-narrow-medical-view-women-agency-8995992/