Abortions in India continue to face huge stigma - which pushes women away from legal and health hazard-free services.
This results in millions of women preferring not to go to public health facilities for abortion services. An estimated 78 per cent of the 15.6 million abortions that take place each year in India occur in non-facility settings, mainly through medical abortion pills.
Newly published evidence (Incidence of Treatment for Postabortion Complications in India, 2015) in BMJ Global Health further suggests that in 2015, 5.2 million women in India received treatment for induced abortion complications, a treatment rate of 15.7 per 1000 women aged 15-49; comparable to countries where abortion law is highly restrictive, and unsafe abortion is likely to be prevalent.
According to a 2016 study published in The Lancet by the Guttmacher Institute and the World Health Organisation, unsafe abortion remains the third leading cause of maternal mortality in India, and nearly eight women die from complications due to unsafe abortion each day.?
Awareness of abortions procedure remains dangerously low in the country.
In September, a Nagpur woman performed self-abortion to deliver a stillborn baby, using steps shown in a YouTube video.?
She used household items to perform the procedure.
The 24-year-old woman was forced to perform an abortion by her lover, who reportedly asked the survivor to follow steps shown in a YouTube video.
When her family members weren¡¯t at home one day, she took the life-threatening step of self-aborting the foetus, even cutting the umbilical cord using household items, to detach it.
The government has revised the upper limit for abortion from 20 weeks to 24 weeks for some categories of vulnerable women, PTI reported.?
The Centre notified new rules regarding this under the Medical Termination of Pregnancy (Amendment) Rules, 2021.
The rules will be applicable to women and minors who have suffered sexual assault, rape, or incest.
The new rules also cover mentally ill women, cases of foetal malformation that has a substantial risk of being incompatible with life or if the child is born it may suffer from such physical or mental abnormalities to be seriously handicapped and women with pregnancy in humanitarian settings.
Others who are allowed abortions include women pregnant in disaster or emergency situations and whose marital status changes during their pregnancy.
According to older rules, an abortion that was performed within 12 weeks required a doctor¡¯s consent. To terminate a pregnancy between 12 and 20 weeks, the consent of two doctors was required.
According to the new rules, a state-level medical board will be set up to decide if pregnancy may be terminated after 24 weeks in cases of foetal malformation and if the foetal malformation has a substantial risk of it being incompatible with life or if the child is born it may suffer from such physical or mental abnormalities to be seriously handicapped.
The function of the Medical Board shall be to examine the woman and her reports if she approaches for medical termination of pregnancy and provides the opinion with regard to the termination of pregnancy or rejection of a request for termination within three days of receiving the request.