The Supreme Court has insisted in a forward-looking approach that any discrimination between married and unmarried women for abortion after 20 weeks, violates her personal autonomy. The Supreme court bench said it will interpret the Medical Termination of Pregnancy (MTP) Act and the elated rules to see if unmarried women could be allowed to abort upto 24-week pregnancy on medical advice.
"When there are exceptions provided under the law, then why unmarried women can't be included to terminate 24-weeks pregnancy if the medical advice permits so?" questioned the judge.
The bench said it can strike down the restrictive clause "for being manifestly arbitrary", which in turn would allow extending the benefit of terminating pregnancy above 20 weeks to unmarried women also.
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