India – Cannot force sexual assault victim to continue unwanted pregnancy: Bombay HC

If forced to give birth to a child against her wish, the court would be depriving her of the right to decide the "path of her life", it said.

21 June 2025

Mumbai: A victim of sexual assault cannot be compelled to continue her unwanted pregnancy, the Bombay High Court has said while allowing a 12-year-old girl to abort her 28-week pregnancy despite an adverse report from medical experts.

If forced to give birth to a child against her wish, the court would be depriving her of the right to decide the "path of her life", it said. A medical board, after examining the girl, had opined that the process of termination of pregnancy would be highly risky, considering the girl's age and the stage of the growth of the fetus.

Continued: https://www.deccanherald.com/india/maharashtra/can-not-force-sexual-assault-victim-to-continue-unwanted-pregnancy-bombay-hc-3596723#google_vignette

21.06.2025

News

Bombay High Court

Medical Termination of Pregnancy Act

Nitin Sambre

Sachin Deshmukh

sexual assault and abortion

India – Force-fed abortion pills, raped minor dies in Jabalpur

Oct 20, 2023

BHOPAL: Forced to take abortion pills, a minor rape survivor from Katni died in a private hospital is Jabalpur on Thursday night. Police are looking for the alleged rapist and a woman who bought the pills for him. The victim’s mother has told police that the child was suffering from stomach pain for the last four months. Her health kept deteriorating. She was initially treated in the village itself but the pain got worse and her parents took her to Jabalpur, where she was hospitalized on Wednesday evening.

Continued: https://timesofindia.indiatimes.com/city/bhopal/force-fed-abortion-pills-raped-minor-dies-in-jabalpur/articleshow/104567528.cms

20.10.2023

sexual assault and abortion

India – Abortion for Survivors of Sexual Assault: What Are the Delhi HC Guidelines?

The Medical Termination of Pregnancy Act is now to be read with the guidelines issued by the Delhi High Court.

AISHANI MENON
20 Aug 2023

On 9 August, the Delhi High Court added two important guidelines for officers, doctors, and other authorities in cases of medical termination of pregnancy of sexual assault survivors. The court said:

The medical termination of the pregnancy is to be carried out with "utmost caution" by the medical professional involved.

The investigating officer must ensure that the survivor is taken to the hospital within 24 hours of receiving an order for the medical termination of the pregnancy and ensure that the foetus is preserved (whenever such an order is issued).

The HC issued these guidelines after a 14-year-old survivor of sexual assault and her mother moved court this year, seeking termination of the pregnancy of the minor. She was over 24 weeks pregnant in January.

Continued: https://www.thequint.com/gender/medical-termination-of-pregnancy-delhi-high-court-guidelines-for-sexual-assault-survivors

20.08.2023

Commentary

Aishwarya Sinha

Child Welfare Committee

Delhi High Court

Medical Termination of Pregnancy Act

sexual assault and abortion

sexual assault survivors

Pastors say they support ‘sanctity of life’ after case involving 11-year-old girl

Friday, August 18, 2023
By LYNAIRE MUNNINGS

AFTER an 11-year-old girl allegedly impregnated by her mother’s boyfriend aborted the baby with pills procured by her mother, two prominent religious leaders said yesterday that many churchgoers still oppose abortion in such circumstances.

...Alicia Wallace, director of Equality Bahamas, said given the degree of gender-based violence in The Bahamas, it is “ridiculous and inhumane to expect women or children to suffer through unwanted pregnancies”.

"There is absolutely no reason to criminalise a child or the people who helped her to access critical healthcare that likely saved her life, preventing further physical and mental harm,” she said on Wednesday.

Continued: http://www.tribune242.com/news/2023/aug/18/we-oppose-abortion-even-case-rape-pastors-say-they/

India – Courts may ‘allow abortion beyond 24 weeks’ of pregnancy for sexual assault victims: Delhi HC

Single-judge bench of Justice Swarna Kanta Sharma issued guidelines while hearing a petition by a 14-yr-old victim, seeking abortion in the 25th week of her pregnancy.

AKSHAT JAIN
27 January, 2023

New Delhi: The Delhi High Court Wednesday issued guidelines for abortion in cases of sexual assault, noting that a victim cannot be forced to give birth to a child as it would violate her right to live with dignity.

The judgment delivered by a single-judge bench of Justice Swarna Kanta Sharma was uploaded Thursday on the Delhi HC website. The judge observed that crucial time is lost in the process of passing termination orders. It issued a slew of directions to investigating officers in cases of pregnancies exceeding 24 weeks.

Continued: https://theprint.in/judiciary/courts-may-allow-abortion-beyond-24-weeks-of-pregnancy-for-sexual-assault-victims-delhi-hc/1337845/

27.01.2023

Featured

News

Medical Termination of Pregnancy Act

rape and abortion

sexual assault and abortion

Canada – Ukrainian victims of sexual violence need reproductive health care: Sajjan

Canadian Press
May 29, 2022

OTTAWA — International Development Minister Harjit Sajjan says he told Canadian officials in Ukraine and neighbouring countries to ensure that women sexually assaulted by Russian troops get the help they need — including access to abortions if they wish.

He said pregnant sexual assault victims who have fled Ukraine, where abortion is legal, to Poland, which last year outlawed abortion in most cases, could be helped to travel to elsewhere in Europe.

Continued: https://chatnewstoday.ca/2022/05/29/ukrainian-victims-of-sexual-violence-need-reproductive-health-care-sajjan/

29.05.2022

sexual assault and abortion

USA – Abortion Bans Are Disregarding the Lives of Sexual Assault Survivors

By removing even exceptions for rape from their anti-abortion legislation, Republican politicians are finally starting to say the quiet part out loud.

By Kylie Cheung
Feb 22, 2022

Anti-abortion politicians have always been clear on one thing: Abortion is murder. But for years, this “logic” hasn’t held up against their occasional concession that abortion bans make exceptions for rape. Of course, if these politicians genuinely believed that abortion is murder, they wouldn’t allow any concession at all. Instead, they have long used the rape exception to have it both ways, claiming to simultaneously care about women and also be “pro-life”—two antithetical positions to take.

This dynamic is beginning to shift. Since the much-publicized feud between Rep. Marjorie Taylor Greene and fellow Republican Rep. Nancy Mace last December over whether abortion bans should include rape exceptions at all, a string of recent proposed and enacted state abortion bans have been made in Taylor Greene’s image more so than Mace’s.

Continued: https://jezebel.com/abortion-bans-rape-exceptions-effect-survivors-1848516164

Argentina’s Decades-Long Fight to Legalize Abortion Ends in Victory

The campaign to legalize abortion began sometime in the late 1970s, when the “grandmothers” of the green wave were living in exile across Europe.

By Cecilia Nowell
Jan, 2021

On Tuesday evening, Argentina was filled with
green: green graffiti proclaiming “Children, Not Mothers,” green banners
exclaiming “It Will Be Law,” and green bandanas reading “National Campaign for
Legal, Safe, and Free Abortion.” Teenagers and grown women alike tied the green
handkerchiefs of the campaign to legalize abortion around their necks to signal
their devotion to the cause as they poured out into the streets of more than
120 cities. Together, they stood vigil for nearly 12 hours as the Argentine
Senate debated a bill to legalize abortion.

Just after 4 AM on Wednesday, as hundreds of thousands waited on the steps of
the Palace of the Argentine National Congress, the news came in: With 38 votes
in favor, 29 opposed, and 1 abstention, abortion was legalized. Crowds cheered
and sobbed with relief.

Continued: https://www.thenation.com/article/world/argentina-abortion-feminism/

01.01.2021

Association of Women’s Work and Study

ATEM 25 de noviembre

Cecilia Palmeiro

Commission for the Right to Abortion

Cristina Fernández de Kirchner

Dora Coledesky

Feminist Revolutionary League

history of abortion activism

International Safe Abortion Day

Lucía Perez

Magui Bellotti

María Florencia Alcaraz

National Campaign for Legal Safe and Free Abortion

National Women’s Conference

Ni Una Menos

Not One Less

Rosana Fanjul

sexual assault and abortion

Argentina’s new government moves to guarantee access to abortion in rape cases

Argentina's new government moves to guarantee access to abortion in rape cases

Hugh Bronstein, Reuters
December 12, 2019

BUENOS AIRES — Women and girls in Argentina seeking to end pregnancies caused by rape will be guaranteed access to abortion under a protocol announced on Thursday aimed at reducing the latitude hospitals have in deciding whether or not to perform the procedure.

Argentine law allows abortion in case of rape or threat to the life or health of the mother. But abortion rights advocates say the law is not always applied across the largely Roman Catholic country and that local hospitals have too much power to decide which cases fall under the legal criteria.

Continued: https://nationalpost.com/pmn/health-pmn/argentinas-new-government-moves-to-guarantee-access-to-abortion-in-rape-cases

12.12.2019

Amnesty International

conscientious objection

Ginés González García

rape and abortion

sexual assault and abortion

Jamaica – ‘Through Pregnancy and Abortion…I Obeyed Like a Robot’: Abuse Survivor Tells of Predator Priest

'Through Pregnancy and Abortion...I Obeyed Like a Robot': Abuse Survivor Tells of Predator Priest
Today aged 57, the academic is a leading member of a new international organisation, Ending Clerical Abuse (ECA), which is bringing together victims in Rome this week to pressure Pope Francis to take a tougher line on child abuse by clerics.

AFP - February 19, 2019

Paris: Denise Buchanan was 17 when she was raped by a seminarian who continued to abuse her when he became a priest in her native Jamaica. The Catholic Church, she says, has offered her nothing but their "prayers".

"I got pregnant and he arranged a clandestine abortion," Buchanan, still shaking and close to tears 40 years after the ordeal, told AFP.

Continued: https://www.news18.com/news/world/through-pregnancy-and-abortion-i-obeyed-like-a-robot-abuse-survivor-tells-of-predator-priest-2041173.html