JCD Prabhakar’s appearance at the National March for Life brings an explicitly Catholic anti-abortion argument into Tamil Nadu’s political arena, where reproductive rights have rarely been organised along religious lines
Arun Janardhanan
Aug 11, 2026
The Speaker of the Tamil Nadu Legislative Assembly, JCD Prabhakar, joined a Catholic anti-abortion gathering in Chennai Sunday and declared that “life begins at conception”, placing one of the state’s highest constitutional office-holders alongside a movement seeking to persuade Indians to reconsider abortion through the moral theology of the Catholic Church.
Prabhakar, 73, a ruling Tamilaga Vettri Kazhagam (TVK) MLA from Thousand Lights, was addressing the fifth National March for Life, organised at Stella Maris College by CHARIS India under the Catholic Bishops’ Conference of India. More than 5,000 people attended, according to organisers. According to Prabhakar, the gathering was deliberately held around August 10, the date on which India’s Medical Termination of Pregnancy Act was enacted in 1971– a law that established a legal framework for abortion and was significantly liberalised by amendments in 2021.