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19 March 2024

Teen to have abortion after court row

Published
By AFP

A 14-year-old alleged rape victim will undergo a late-term abortion, one of her doctors said Thursday, days after India's top court overturned previous rulings barring the girl from the procedure.
 
The father of the girl, who cannot be named for legal reasons, claims she became pregnant in February after her doctor injected her with sedatives and then raped her.
 
His petition for her to be allowed an abortion after the 20-week legal limit was turned down by two regional courts before the Supreme Court on Tuesday gave the go-ahead if medics deemed there was a "serious threat to her life if the child is not aborted".

MM Prabhakar, one of the doctors appointed to the case, said the girl was not in a fit state to have the baby and the procedure would be carried out on Friday in Ahmedabad, the main city in western Gujurat state.
 
"The girl is not physically fit and her mental condition is also not stable. She was found to have suicidal tendencies," Prabhakar, the medical chief of Ahmedabad's civil hospital, told AFP.
 
"Therefore it has been decided to abort the foetus."
 
The girl's father took his appeal to New Delhi's Supreme Court after the Gujurat High Court denied permission for the abortion last week, saying the baby was innocent and "did not ask to be born".
 
Police are holding the doctor who allegedly raped the 14-year-old in custody.