Editor’s note: On 25 July 2016, the Ultimate Court allowed a rape victim “Ms X” to abort her 24-week-old foetus. The case got a great deal of focus due to the fact that under the Medical Termination of Pregnancy Act, 1971, abortions are not permissible after twenty weeks, unless there is danger to the mother’s life. The progression additionally prompted a debate about the 45-year-old MTP Act, and its repercussions.
The recent case concerning a woman that was raped then asked for permission to terminate an abnormal fetus at 24 weeks of pregnancy has actually attracted lot of media attention. She appealed to the Ultimate Court, which decided that the woman must be allowed to terminate her pregnancy. They carved out an exception for her, due to the fact that the latest MTP law doesn’t permit doctors to terminate pregnancies beyond twenty weeks — even if the fetus has actually a lethal defect. While this is being described as a triumph of women’s rights, the case enhances a great deal of issues.
Representational image of an ultrasound procedure. Photo from freeimages.com
For one, merely consider the quantity of time, your hard earned cash and electricity which was consumed in giving permission to this one woman — the lawyer’s efforts; the SC judges; and the doctors that were empanelled by the Court to provide their medical expert opinion. Isn’t this a waste due to the fact that it was every one of expended on merely one case? While this helps the woman in question, just what concerning every one of the various other women that could discover themselves in the very same boat?
In fact, we’ve now established a precedent where every pregnant woman that finds herself in the very same situation will certainly go operating to the court. We will certainly merely end up clogging the judicial system along with every one of these cases, and this is not in anyone’s interests.
Pregnancy is a pretty personal matter, and whether or not to terminate an abnormal fetus must actually be a medical decision, which is ideal left up to the patient and her doctor.
The trouble is, we don’t trust our doctors anymore to make these decisions correctly, which is why we have actually draconian laws adore the Pre-Conception and Pre-Natal Diagnostic Techniques Act (PCPNDT) which manage every doctor as a criminal anytime he/she does an ultrasound scan, until proven otherwise. It’s this type of thinking which has actually contaminated the entire healthiness care system.
The question is — why do we trust judges to have the ability to give wiser decisions as compared to doctors? Doctors are the medical experts, that are suffered at dealing along with personal patients that are faced along with such complex choices. Aren’t these decisions ideal gained at an personal degree by the patient and her doctor, pretty compared to asking for judicial intervention every time the patient falls outside the rigid artificial framework of the law?
Why do we expect the judiciary or the parliament to have the ability to solve these problems? Let’s assume that as a result of every one of the media attention, the law does get hold of amended to permit termination of pregnancy up to 24 weeks. after that just what happens to the next woman that finds that her fetus has actually an abnormality at 25 weeks? Does she additionally have actually to go to the Ultimate Court? Do we modification the law every few years?
We should step spine and consider just what we are achieving by passing laws adore this, which lay down a firm line as to just what is allowed and just what is not. Wouldn’t it make even more sense to provide autonomy to the medical career so they can easily make the right decisions for their patients?
Both logically and intuitively, most individuals feel that it makes sense to permit a woman that has actually an abnormal fetus to terminate it, due to the fact that we are actually not serving any sort of purpose by forcing her to provide birth to an abnormal baby. Yes, there are difficult ethical issues. For example, just what happens if the baby has actually Down’s syndrome, which means the baby Would certainly live, however Would certainly be mentally retarded? Does the mother have actually the right to terminate the pregnancy? Or does the baby have actually a right to live, and that merely due to the fact that the baby is mentally retarded, must his right be taken away?
These are difficult problems which the medical profession, philosophers and ethicists have actually grappled along with for numerous years. I don’t believe anyone has actually found the right answer as yet. However, it makes no sense to me that we expect either the judiciary or the legislature to have the ability to give the right solution. For one, the legal system is painfully slow, and it can easily never ever maintain up along with advances in medical technology, or along with social opinion.
It is unreasonable to expect the law to have the ability to solve such thorny issues. This judgment has actually not solved the problem — we have actually merely kicked the can easily further down the road. just what we actually reason are empowering laws, which permit doctors and patients to make the right decision for themselves, based on the personal circumstances of the case. Unless we can easily trust doctors to do this ethically and correctly, this issue is going to become steadily unmanageable, due to the fact that every one of we’ve done is give a short term fix to this personal woman’s problem. We’ve not addressed the larger problems which have actually been raised. In one sense, this is a lost opportunity, and we should check out the bigger picture and discover long-term efficient solutions.
While the judicial system is wonderful at resolving conflicts and punishing criminal activity, it’s actually not well suited for solving these type of problems. Utilising scarce and beneficial judicial resources for solving these type of problems is pretty wasteful.
A rigid law is not an efficient solution, due to the fact that we cannot usage a one size fits every one of approach for these problems. The law cannot give customised solutions for each unique patient. It Would certainly make a lot more sense to pass a law which sets up a regulatory body, along with judges and doctors on the panel, which could weigh each thorny problem individually. The panel could provide each case the time and focus it deserves, pretty compared to saddling the already creaking judicial system along with more cases.
Dr Aniruddha Malpani is a leading IVF specialist
