A Gujarat court has denied late-term abortion to a 14-year-old girl after she was allegedly raped by a doctor, her lawyer said on Friday.
“It did not ask to be born… The child is innocent, just like the victim, its mother,” the Gujarat High Court said on Thursday, while rejecting the girl’s father’s petition on this matter.
The court also noted that India’s abortion law does not allow termination of pregnancy after 20 weeks, or five months.
The father’s petition alleged that the girl had become pregnant in February after she visited the doctor, who injected her with sedatives and then raped her. The police had then arrested the doctor.
“Whatever be the circumstances in which the child was conceived, whatever the trauma of the young mother, the fact remains that the child is also not to blame for being conceived,” said judge Abhilasha Kumari, while adding that the decision had been ‘difficult’.
“The father of the victim is a labourer and does not have enough resources to take care of the child to be born… The parents are yet to decide if they want to approach higher forum,” the teenager’s lawyer, Pradip Bhate, told AFP.
Interestingly, the same Gujarat court had denied abortion to a 24-year-old gang rape victim in April who was pregnant for more than six months. The woman later refused to keep custody of the baby, giving it to the state government for protection.
