X Vs. UNION OF INDIA

JUDGEMENT

(1.) The Registry is directed to anonymize the name of the petitioner in this judgment, all orders that have been passed as well as in the records which are publicly available.

(2.) The petitioner is a married woman of twenty-seven years. She and her husband have two children, the younger of which is about one year old. She filed the petition under Article 32 for directions to the respondents to permit a medical termination of her ongoing pregnancy. The petitioner states that she did not discover that she was pregnant until after twenty weeks of the pregnancy had elapsed because she had lactational amenorrhea. As a result of lactational amenorrhea, women who are breastfeeding do not menstruate. She therefore did not realize that the absence of menstruation was indicative of pregnancy. The petitioner states that she visited the gynaecologist for the first time after the delivery of her second child because she was feeling weak, nauseous, dizzy and experiencing abdominal discomfort. She underwent an ultrasound scan, upon which she realized that she was pregnant. The pregnancy was estimated to be around twenty-four weeks at that time.

(3.) The petitioner avers that she and her husband attempted to medically terminate the pregnancy at various hospitals but that they were unable to because of the Medical Termination of Pregnancy Act 1971[1] read with the Medical Termination of Pregnancy Rules 2003[2] (as amended in 2021). She therefore approached this Court by invoking its writ jurisdiction. She sought permission for the medical termination of her pregnancy on the following grounds: