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LATEST NEWS UPDATES | Abortion law plan stirs concern

Abortion law plan stirs concern

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published Published on Jun 26, 2015   modified Modified on Jun 26, 2015
-The Telegraph

New Delhi: The health ministry's proposals to amend the abortion law have contradictory clauses that could force women to take unjustified decisions about their foetuses, a Mumbai gynaecologist said today, echoing concerns shared by other doctors.

The Medical Termination of Pregnancy Act of 1971 prohibits abortion after 20 weeks of gestation. But the ministry, in a draft document released last year, has proposed changes to make the duration of pregnancy immaterial when a foetus has substantial anomalies.

The proposed amendments also suggest termination of pregnancies between 20 and 24 weeks would be allowed only if the woman falls within a set of "categories as may be prescribed by the government".

"These clauses are contradictory," Nikhil Datar, a gynaecologist at Cloudnine Hospital, Mumbai, said in a commentary published today in the British Medical Journal.

The draft does not define the categories and does not provide a clear solution for women who have substantial foetal abnormalities that may not fall within these categories. Without an unambiguous law, Datar wrote, many women will continue to make ill-informed decisions or risk their lives by seeking illegal terminations through quacks.

The current 20-week cut-off has long been viewed by sections of doctors as arbitrary and something that compels women to opt for abortions without being absolutely sure that they are taking the right decision.

Datar recalls how a woman in Mumbai recently opted to abort her foetus after an ultrasound scan suggested what appeared to be a structural abnormality in her foetus at near 20 weeks, instead of waiting for a more reliable and confirmatory test.

Another woman, a nurse who chose to wait for the result of such a confirmatory test, was forced to seek an illegal abortion conducted about 22 weeks into gestation, a doctor in Mumbai said. Sections of the gynaecological and obstetrics communities have long demanded a change in the abortion law.

"Some foetal abnormalities like certain cardiac anomalies can be detected only between 20 and 22 weeks," said Hitesh Bhatt, a Mumbai-based gynaecologist and chairman of the ethics and medico-legal panel of the Federation of the Obstetrics and Gynaecological Societies of India.

Bhatt said members of the federation had several months ago written to the ministry suggesting that abortions under the law should be clustered into two categories - therapeutic abortions, necessitated when serious foetal abnormalities are detected and non-therapeutic abortions required by other factors such as failure of contraception.

"For therapeutic abortions, there really should be no time limit, but for other abortions, the 20-week limit is justified," Bhatt said.

Some doctors have also suggested a 26-week cut-off for therapeutic abortions. "Most abnormalities should be detected by 26 weeks. We're hoping the health ministry considers this," said Shymal Sett, a gynaecologist in Calcutta, who is the chairperson of the medical termination of pregnancy panel in the federation of gynaecologists.

"A procedure beyond 26 weeks wouldn't come under medical termination of pregnancy - it would be an obstetric-driven condition, something that threatens the baby or the mother, a procedure then would be called emergency induction of labour," Sett said.

The Telegraph, 26 June, 2015, http://www.telegraphindia.com/1150626/jsp/nation/story_27922.jsp#.VY0mwfn76KY


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