RACISM IN ANICENT INDIA

OVERVIEW

An abortion is a medical procedure that ends a pregnancy. It is a basic healthcare need for millions of women, girls and others who can become pregnant. Worldwide, an estimated 1 in 4 pregnancies end in an abortion every year.
But while the need for abortion is common, access to safe and legal abortion services is far from guaranteed for those who may need abortion services. 
In fact, access to abortion is one of the most hotly contested topics globally, and the debate is clouded by misinformation about the true ramifications of restricting access to this basic healthcare service.

• Safe abortion: provided by health-care workers and with methods recommended by the WHO.
• Less-safe abortion: done by trained providers using non-recommended methods or using a safe method (e.g. misoprostol) but without adequate information or support from a trained individual.
• Least-safe abortion:    done by a trained provider using dangerous, invasive methods.

People have abortions all the time, regardless of what the law says

Ending a pregnancy is a common decision that millions of people make – every year a quarter of pregnancies end in abortion.

And regardless of whether abortion is legal or not, people still require and regularly access abortion services. According to the Guttmacher Institute, a US-based reproductive health non-profit, the abortion rate is 37 per 1,000 people in countries that prohibit abortion altogether or allow it only in instances to save a woman’s life, and 34 per 1,000 people in countries that broadly allow for abortion, a difference that is not statistically significant.

When undertaken by a trained health-care provider in sanitary conditions, abortions are one of the safest medical procedures available, safer even than child birth.

But when governments restrict access to abortions, people are compelled to resort to clandestine, unsafe abortions, particularly those who cannot afford to travel or seek private care. Which brings us to the next point.

Abortion: India Supreme Court says amended law to cover single women too

India's Supreme Court has said that all women, including those not married, could get an abortion up to 24 weeks.

The court ruling came on a plea seeking clarity on the amended 2021 abortion law which listed several groups that did not include single women.

The court said all women, regardless of their marital status, were entitled to safe and legal abortion.

It said that excluding single women in consensual relationships would be "unconstitutional".

Abortions have been legal in India since 1971, but over the years authorities have made strict rules for who can terminate a pregnancy because of the abortions of millions of female foetuses, leading to a terribly skewed gender ratio in the country. Traditionally, Indians have shown a preference for male children over daughters.

Last year, the government amended the Medical Termination of Pregnancy Act (MTP) to allow several categories of women to seek abortions between 20 and 24 weeks.

The list included rape survivors, minors, women with mental disabilities, women with foetuses that had major abnormalities and married women whose marital status had changed during the pregnancy.

Justices DY Chandrachud, AS Bopanna and JB Pardiwal said a woman's marital status could not be grounds to deprive her of the right to abort an unwanted pregnancy.

The judges also said that under this law, the meaning of rape would include sexual assault by husbands.

India is yet to criminalise marital rape. Under current laws, sex "by a man with his own wife" who's not a minor is not rape.

In May, the Delhi high court had delivered a split verdict in a case seeking to outlaw the British-era law, with the two judges expressing opposing views on the matter.

In general, it can be concluded that the initiative on the determinants and consequences of induced abortion has shown some important patterns. For example, induced abortion is not restricted to adolescents but occurs also within marriage to limit family size. Induced abortion is prevalent both where family planning services are available and contraceptive prevalence is high as well as where family planning is not common, but for different reasons. In the former, motivation to limit family size is high and women would use any option if contraception fails or an unwanted pregnancy occurs. In the latter case, induced abortion forms part of a mix of incipient fertility regulation alternatives, most of which are traditional and of little effectiveness but including some use or improper use of modern methods. Few abortion seekers, and among them even fewer adolescents, were using a modern contraceptive at the time the pregnancy started. High use of traditional methods in some countries leads to abortion as women/couples fail to follow proper instructions with regards to the safe period. Unsafe clandestine abortions are more likely to be sought by poorer women and by adolescents. The findings of this research are increasingly being used to question the legal status of abortion in countries where the law is restrictive, or to strengthen family planning efforts in order to reduce abortion incidence.