-The Hindu With the Medical Termination of Pregnancy (MTP) Act coming into effect in 1972, India conveyed a strong message that it cared for the health of pregnant women who wanted to safely terminate their pregnancies. Yet, even four decades later, many women are still unaware that abortion is legal. Even access to safe abortion centres is severely restricted, especially in rural areas. As a result, there is a great...
More »SEARCH RESULT
Ambiguity in abortion, other laws puts doctors in a fix-Aarti Dhar
-The Hindu Lack of harmonisation of the Medical Termination of Pregnancy Act, 1971 with those meant to protect children from sexual abuse has put gynaecologists in a fix. The abortion law guarantees absolute confidentiality to a woman irrespective of her age, while the Protection of Children from Sexual Offences Act, 2012 and the Criminal Law Amendment Act, 2013 - put in place after the horrific gang-rape of the 23-year-old girl in Delhi...
More »Court: having sex when there is intention to marry is not rape-J Venkatesan
-The Hindu A man having sex with a woman he intends to marry, with her consent, cannot be said to have committed rape if for some reasons the marriage does not take place, the Supreme Court held on Monday. A vacation Bench of Justices B.S. Chauhan and Dipak Misra said: "Consent may be express or implied, coerced or misguided, obtained willingly or through deceit. Consent is an act of reason, accompanied by...
More »Nobody’s children
-The Hindustan Times Far from the neatly trimmed lawns of India Gate that so often reverberate with cries for justice, far also from the corridors of power where ministries recently squabbled over the right age for Consensual sex, lie 197 districts - yes 197, read the figure again - where children are regularly abused. In these districts -- all ridden by conflict -- words like illegal detention, arbitrary arrests, sexual violence, torture...
More »Breather for sex workers in anti-rape law -Rakhi Chakrabarty
-The Times of India The amended anti-rape law does not include prostitution as a form of exploitation unlike the ordinance that criminalized sex work. The Criminal Law Amendment Bill, 2013 makes a distinction between sexual exploitation and consensual adult sex work. The move was welcomed by sex workers and activists who had slammed the ordinance that defined prostitution as exploitation. The ordinance cleared by the Cabinet on the Criminal Law (Amendment) Bill,...
More »