Top court in India allows abortion for 13-year-old rape victim

How can a 13-year-old become a mother? Chief Justice Misra questions

The top court in India has allowed a 13-year-old rape survivor from Mumbai to terminate her 31-weeks-long pregnancy stating that the mental trauma would be too much for the child, The Hindu reported.

The girl’s family had approached the Supreme Court for the decision and on Wednesday a bench of three judges led by Chief Justice Dipak Misra decided to favour the girl’s plea for an abortion.

“How can a 13-year-old become a mother?” Justice Misra questioned.



The family of the child, who said her father’s colleague raped her six months ago, only realised in August that she was expecting. They had taken her to a doctor to determine whether her sudden ‘obesity’ was caused by thyroid but an ultrasound showed that she was 27 weeks pregnant. Police officials claim that until that moment, she had not informed her parents about the sexual assault.

In the hearing, the rape survivor’s counsel, advocate Sneha Mukherjee, said that the knowledge that she was pregnant had “affected her critically”.

The apex court had sought the opinion of medical experts who concluded that if the pregnancy was allowed to continue, the baby would be pre-term and require intensive neo-natal care and that both the ‘mother’ and the baby would be at grave risk.



“Considering the age of the petitioner (rape survivor), the trauma she has suffered because of sexual abuse, the agony she is going through and the opinion of the medical board favouring termination of pregnancy, the termination of pregnancy should be allowed,” the court ordered.

India's Medical Termination of Pregnancy Act does not allow abortion if the pregnancy has crossed 20 weeks, but in this case the court made an exception after the medical board had determined that continuing with it would be harmful.

The verdict comes at the heels of the case of 10-year-old rape survivor from Chandigarh whom the court had recently denied permission to abort her foetus. The child had given birth shortly after that verdict and the apex court had awarded Indian Rs1 million as compensation to her.