States asked to set up permanent medical boards for abortion cases

The Centre on Thursday informed the Supreme Court that it has asked all the states and Union Territories to set up a permanent medical board to decide pregnancy termination pleas.

“We have sent communications to all the states and Union Territories to deal with such matters,” Solicitor General Ranjit Kumar told a bench of Justices S A Bobde and L Nageswara Rao.

He said the letters were sent in compliance with the orders issued by a separate bench to curb the inordinate delay.

A bench presided over by the then CJI Justice J S Khehar, which had declined a plea by a 10-year-old rape survivor for the abortion of 32-week-old foetus, had issued the direction.

Kumar made his submission before the court that allowed a Pune-based woman’s plea to abort her 25-week foetus after a medical board found it to be without skull and could not survive.

“We consider it appropriate in the interests of justice and particularly, to permit the petitioner to undergo medical termination of her pregnancy under the provisions of Medical Termination of Pregnancy Act, 1971,” the bench said.

A separate case pertaining to a 13-year-old rape survivor to abort her 30-week-old foetus was put for consideration next week after the court was told the medical board could not be set up to examine her due to rain in Mumbai.