Abortion

What is Abortion?

Abortion is the termination of pregnancy which can be carried out through medical or surgical procedures. A spontaneous abortion, more commonly known as miscarriage, is when a pregnancy ends on its own before the 20th week of pregnancy. Globally, 3 in 10 pregnancies end in abortion. The procedure can be carried out through medication or surgery, depending on the stage of pregnancy and the individual’s medical needs. When performed in appropriate settings by trained clinicians, abortion is a safe procedure that helps prevent complications and supports individuals in managing their reproductive health.

Official Definition of Abortion

Abortion was prohibited in India until the 1960s. In the mid-1960s, the Government of India appointed a committee under the chairmanship of a medical professional, Dr. Shantilal Shah. The objective of this committee was to investigate the ground reality faced by pregnant women and the need for abortion in India. After the submission of the report, the Medical Termination of Pregnancy Act was passed in 1971. Although the Act essentially addresses abortion rights, the term ‘abortion’ is absent. The word ‘miscarriage’ appears in the Bharatiya Nyaya Sanhita, 2023 under the title ‘Of Causing Miscarriage,’ but this term, too, is undefined.

Legal Provisions relating to term

Medical Termination of Pregnancy Act

1. Section 3 (2)(a) of Medical Termination of Pregnancy Act, 1971 mentioned when pregnancies can be terminated by registered medical practitioners and it limited the period within which pregnancies could be terminated to twelve weeks. The upper limit for termination was twenty weeks provided that not less than two medical practitioners were of the opinion that it was in the best interest of the woman to terminate the pregnancy.
2. This section was amended in Medical Termination of Pregnancy Amendment Act, 2021 to increase the length of gestation period before when a pregnancy can be terminated to twenty weeks. Subsequently the maximum limit not to be exceeded was extended to twenty four weeks, subject to the same conditions as before.
3. The amendment also broadened the scope for termination by including Section 3 (2B) that states "provisions of sub-section (2) relating to the length of the pregnancy shall not apply to the termination of pregnancy by the medical practitioner where such termination is necessitated by the diagnosis of any of the substantial foetal abnormalities diagnosed by a Medical Board."

Bharatiya Nyaya Sanhita, 2023

Section 88 to 92 in this Act deal with various instances of causing miscarriage in pregnant women and their relevant punishments. Specifically, sections 88 and 89 focus on causing miscarriage but are differentiated on the basis of consent by the woman. The objective of these sections is to selectively criminalise abortions which are carried out in bad faith so as to safeguard the interests of women without hampering their rights.

Abortion as Defined in International Instruments

Abortion is defined by the World Health Organization (WHO) as “the expulsion or extraction from its mother of a fetus or embryo weighing less than 500 grams.” The ICD-11 defines a spontaneous abortion (or miscarriage) as a spontaneous loss of pregnancy (i.e. embryo or fetus) before 22 completed weeks of gestation. A spontaneous abortion is distinct from an induced abortion. An induced abortion (also referred to as Artificial termination of pregnancy) is a complete expulsion or extraction from a woman of an embryo or a fetus (irrespective of the duration of the pregnancy), following a deliberate interruption of an ongoing pregnancy by medical or surgical means, which is not intended to result in a live birth. A failed attempted abortion is defined as an ongoing pregnancy after medical or surgical interventions which fail to terminate the pregnancy.

Centres for Disease Control defines legal induced abortion as "an intervention performed within the limits of state and jurisdiction law by a licensed clinician (for instance, a physician, nurse-midwife, nurse practitioner, physician assistant) intended to terminate a suspected or known intrauterine pregnancy and that does not result in a live birth." This definition excludes management of intrauterine fetal death, early pregnancy failure/loss, ectopic pregnancy, or retained products of conception.

Although most international treaties and conventions fail to define the term 'abortion', they include access to abortion as part of women's health rights. For example, The Committee on Economic, Social and Cultural Rights, in 2020, recommended that States prohibit any exposure of women to biased or medically unsound information on the risks of abortion that impedes their access to sexual and reproductive health services. More recently, The Committee on Elimination of Discrimination Against Women, in it's general recommendation No. 40, provided for full access to sexual and reproductive health and rights services and sought to remove legal and practical obstacles, including any denial of the legal capacity of women and girls, including women and girls with disabilities, to make healthcare decisions.

Term in Official Government Reports

The Handbook on Medical Methods of Abortion (2016) and the Training Manual for Medical Methods of Abortion (2022) are two additional reports released by the National Health Mission. They do not directly define abortion, but they provide details on abortion procedures and their legal framework. Both the handbook and manual explain Medical Methods of Abortion as a non-surgical, non-invasive approach to terminating pregnancy using drugs or a combination of drugs.

Comprehensive Abortion Care, 2023

The Comprehensive Abortion Care released in 2023 is a set of guidelines issued by the Ministry of Health and Family Welfare under the National Health Mission. The objective of this document was to incorporate necessary changes and create awareness about medical abortion among people after the Medical Termination of Pregnancy, Amendment Act, 2021. According to the report, unsafe abortions account for 8% of maternal deaths in India. It flags the prevalence of non-medical abortion procedures, especially in rural areas, which are the result of social and political factors like social stigma, gender discrimination, lack of knowledge, limited access to approved contraceptives and insufficient trained medical professionals. The document also summarises important legal provisions, focusing on the aspects that have undergone changes after the 2021 Amendment. It ultimately stresses on a woman-centred approach while encountering such cases.

Interpretation of MTP Act By The Courts

In order to secure women’s constitutional rights, Indian courts have often relied on the reproductive justice framework by interweaving the right to make reproductive choices and the State’s duty to facilitate the same with the rights to privacy, health, equality, and life and personal liberty.

In Suchita Srivastava v. Chandigarh Administration (2009) the court treated abortion as a voluntary termination of pregnancy and held that women have the right to plan their future and that reproductive choices made by a woman are protected under Article 21 of the Constitution. Similarly, on the issue of maternal mortality in Laxmi Mandal v. Deen Dayal Harinagar Hospital (2010) in recognizing reproductive justice, the court held that women’s right to make reproductive choices is part of the right to survival under their rights to life and personal liberty. In the landmark case K.S. Puttaswamy v. Union of India (2017), the Supreme Court held that the right to privacy safeguards an individual’s ability to make autonomous decisions about crucial aspects of their life, including choices related to contraception and procreation. In Joseph Shine v. Union of India (2018) and Navtej Singh Johar v. Union of India (2018) the court ruled that sexual autonomy is a crucial aspect of leading a dignified life and is protected under the right to privacy.

In Devika Biswas v. Union of India (2016) and Sandesh Bansal v. Union of India (2012) the court reaffirmed the positive obligation on the State to provide information and infrastructure necessary for enabling realisation of reproductive choices and the right to health. Similarly, in Independent Thought v. Union of India (2017) while reading down Exception 2 to Section 375 of the Indian Penal Code (IPC) and making sexual intercourse with a minor wife an offence, the Supreme Court reaffirmed that the right to make reproductive choices was a crucial element for a dignified life. It observed that the positive obligation on the State to facilitate realisation of reproductive choices cannot be done away with by taking the defence of a perceived social reality. Some courts have used the rights-based lens of freedom, choice, bodily and decisional autonomy to allow abortion even beyond the contours of the MTP Act.

International Experience

Abortion Laws and Data Collection in Other Countries

United States of America

In 1973, in a case called Roe v Wade, the Supreme Court ruled that a woman's right to terminate her pregnancy was protected by the US Constitution up until the point of foetal viability, which is about 24 weeks. This right was applicable uniformly across all states of the country. But in 2022, the U.S. Supreme Court issued its ruling in Dobbs v. Jackson Women's Health Organization, effectively nullifying the constitutional right to abortion while simultaneously allowing states to make their own laws on a previously federally governed subject. 20 US states have banned or limited access to abortion. Seventeen of those states have either enacted complete bans or have banned access to the procedure within six weeks of pregnancy — before many people know they are pregnant. Unlike India, where the Medical Termination of Pregnancy Act applies throughout the country, abortion laws in the United States of America are neither governed under a central legislation nor consistent throughout the country. The gestation period during which abortion is permitted also varies from one state to another.

Abortion data collection in the U.S. are carried out by the Centres for Disease Control (CDC). CDC began abortion surveillance in 1969 to document the number and characteristics of women obtaining legal induced abortions. The information available with the CDC is confined to abortion procedures performed legally, which might not reflect the ground level realities accurately. Preparation of the Abortion Surveillance report is based on the data available from the states and jurisdictions that voluntarily provide this information for a given calendar year. From 2013 to 2022, the total number of reported abortions decreased 5% (from 640,154), the abortion rate decreased 10% (from 12.4 abortions per 1,000 women aged 15–44 years), and the abortion ratio increased 1% (from 198 abortions per 1,000 live births). Abortion Surveillance reports have not been released since 2022 due to which data for comparative analysis of abortions before and after 2022 is insufficient.

Maternal mortality rates are significantly higher in rural areas when compared to their urban counterparts in the US. This is similar to the prevailing trends in India as well. Mortality ratios in rural areas were over 50 percent higher than in large urban areas, though following the pandemic that difference dropped to 33 percent. The causes for high pregnancy mortality rates are lack of adequate healthcare facilities, lesser awareness about contraceptives and medical procedures to terminate pregnancies and much more stigma attached to abortion in rural areas.

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Page created 2026-08-21  ·  Last updated 2026-08-23