It is said that a rape survivor relives the trauma several times after the criminal act—with the police, in repeated appearances in the court, in the community she belongs to, in the neighbourhood that she and her family live in, and in her future marked by this heinous violation. If the survivor is a 15-year-old and pregnant after the rape, the trauma is clearly manifold. If this survivor cannot abort the pregnancy because India’s existing laws do not allow medical termination of pregnancy after 20 weeks of gestation, the trauma assumes untold proportions. This underscores why the Supreme Court of India’s ruling on Thursday, asking for an amendment in the law for minor rape survivors, is enormously significant.
The SC bench of Chief Justice Surya Kant and Justice Joymalya Bagchi held that a minor rape survivor cannot be forced to carry her pregnancy while setting aside a plea by the All India Institute of Medical Sciences (AIIMS) against the apex court’s earlier order allowing her to medically terminate her 30-week pregnancy. Additional Solicitor General Aishwarya Bhati, appearing for AIIMS, mentioned the curative plea, stating that the termination of pregnancy was not possible because “it will be a live baby…it has been 30 weeks now; it’s a viable life now”. However, the SC bench rejected this, reaffirmed the bodily autonomy of the rape survivor, and asked for an amendment in the law to go around the time limitation. “The law needs to be organic and in sync with evolving times,” the bench pointed out. The court’s emphasis on timely legal processes is equally important in such cases.
While medical termination of pregnancy, even in rape cases, is seen as unethical, especially from a puritanical religious perspective, an evolving society cannot, and must not, wrap its laws and norms with the yoke of an ancient or mediaeval past. Women cannot be forced to carry a pregnancy they do not want to—basic humanitarian principles and evolving feminist ideals of autonomy over one’s body demand that—and this is all the more sensitive and urgent in cases of rape. It acquires another layer of complexity if the rape survivor is a minor. Life for an unwed mother and her illegitimate child, born from rape, can never be easy in any society, more so in India, where patriarchy and taboos govern almost every aspect of a woman’s life.
However, unwanted pregnancy, like marital rape, is a subject that barely makes it to gender conferences, let alone courtrooms or public discourses. Against this backdrop, the SC ruling is commendable and progressive. The ball is now with the Union government to move the amendments to the Medical Termination of Pregnancy Act enacted back in 1971. An amendment in 2021 raised the time limitation to 24 weeks for specific vulnerable categories, but, clearly, the SC is nudging the government to make it more humane, especially for rape survivors—not a day too soon.
