Court approves abortion on 28-week-old preborn baby

The Chhattisgarh High Court in India has ruled that a 14-year-old girl who survived rape can abort her baby at later than 28 weeks of pregnancy.

Key Takeaways:

• Justice Amitendra Kishore Prasad ruled that a 14-year-old rape survivor can have a third-trimester abortion.

• Prasad said having the baby would cause more trauma and violate her constitutional rights.

• The abortion was ordered to be committed within one week.

The Details:

On July 3, Justice Amitendra Kishore Prasad ruled that not intentionally ending the baby's life by induced abortion — a child who is old enough to survive outside the womb — would cause the girl additional trauma and violate her rights to privacy, bodily autonomy, and dignity under Article 21 of the Indian Constitution.

The girl had been kidnapped and sexually assaulted in December, but after she was threatened by her abuser, she did not inform her family about it. When she began experiencing severe abdominal pain in June, she was found to be pregnant. Her family called the police.

Under the Medical Termination of Pregnancy (MTP) Act, abortion is legal through 20 weeks with approval from one doctor, and legal from 20-24 weeks with the approval of two doctors, though only for minors, women with disabilities, and rape survivors. After 24 weeks, abortion is allowed if a state-established Medical Board diagnoses the baby with a health condition.

Justice Prasad said the girl had voluntarily expressed she wanted to have an abortion and that there was no reason not to allow it.

A medical board evaluated the girl and reported that she was physically and mentally healthy at 28 weeks and five days pregnant, well beyond the typically-estimated age of 'viability' (the ability of a child to survive outside the womb).

The board noted that an abortion this late in pregnancy carried risks of infection, bleeding, and cervical injuries, but also claimed that carrying to term could cause the girl physical and psychological distress.

What's Happening Now:

The judge ordered the preborn child be killed within one week by a specialized team that included two gynecologists and a surgeon — which means it has likely already been committed. The chief medical and health officer was told to coordinate the abortion and ensure full pre-operative and post-operative care in hopes of minimizing the risks to the teen.

As for the rapist, a criminal investigation is ongoing, and the medical team that commits the abortion was told to preserve the baby's body or a DNA sample to use as evidence.

Why It Matters:

Rape is a violent trauma and abortion does not help the woman to heal or to forget that the rape occurred. Instead, abortion is another act of violence with two victims: the woman and her child. Like rape, nothing can erase abortion. Instead, some rape survivors who have chosen abortion have said their abortions were worse than rape — because in the abortion they were the ones who made the choice to end their child’s life. Abortion was not part of their healing as they were promised, but instead became an obstacle to their healing.

An abortion at nearly 29 weeks gestation is often carried out by a D&E dismemberment procedure that tears the child's arms and legs off of his body before the abortionist crushes his skull. The other option at this gestational age is induction abortion, in which the abortionist often injects the baby's heart with a feticide to cause cardiac arrest and then the mother delivers a stillborn baby.

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“I could never ever deal with my rape because I was so focused on what I had done in choosing abortion,” explained rape survivor Ashley Sigrest. “And that’s what people don’t understand when they tell rape victims, 'Oh yes, have an abortion so that way you can go on and we can deal with the rape.' But the abortion just makes the rape 1,000 times worse because now you have these two horrible events that you have to deal with.”

The Bottom Line:

Abortion after a rape punishes an innocent child with the death penalty for the crimes of his father, and can increase the mother’s risk of things like alcohol use, drug use, depression, and suicidal thoughts. 

It's possible that this young girl, like many mothers of children conceived in rape, was told that her child shouldn’t be here. But a human being’s value is not dependent on how or when he was conceived. Human life begins at the moment of fertilization, and that human life is innocent.