Mumbai teen rape survivor delivers baby as doctors find abortion too risky after two days of Supreme Court nod

A mere two days after the Supreme Court allowed a 13-year-old rape survivor to terminate her 31-week pregnancy on medical grounds, she delivered her baby.

According to Indian Express , she underwent a cesarean operation at JJ Hospital in Mumbai and delivered a boy. The report adds that the baby will be kept in the neonatal intensive care unit. It weighed 1.8 kg at birth. According to Hindustan Times , an average ‘full-term’ baby weighs about 2.5kg. The report adds that JJ hospital put together a team of five doctors for the delivery. The minor will remain in the hospital for another week.

“The life of the girl would have been at risk had an abortion been carried out at this stage. The Supreme Court ordered us to do the operation on 8 September. Therefore, to keep the girl safe a cesarean section was done. Since it’s a premature delivery the baby is kept in the NICU. The foetus was 31-week old. Although it is an underage delivery there is no risk to the mother and child in the future,” JJ Hospital gynaecologist Ashok Anand told Firstpost.

Anand said that the decision to allow her to give birth to the baby was taken after the parents gave the go ahead when informed about the risks involved in abortion. He also said that the apex court was also informed earlier about the risks involved as the foetus was in an advanced stage.

The infant is expected to be kept at a state-run orphanage and could likely get adopted.

The Supreme Court on Wednesday had allowed the 13-year-old rape victim to terminate her 32-week-old pregnancy.

A bench of Chief Justice Dipak Misra, Justice Amitava Roy and Justice AM Khanwilkar passed the direction for termination of pregnancy of the girl after taking note of a medical report filed by a board of doctors of Mumbai’s JJ Hospital, set up by the court. The bench asked the hospital authorities to conduct the termination of pregnancy preferably on this day itself.

The girl, a class 7 student, had sought permission to abort the foetus as section 3(2)(b) of the Medical Termination of Pregnancy (MTP) Act prohibits abortion of a foetus after 20 weeks of pregnancy.

The teenager was first taken to the Supreme Court by gynaecologist Nikhil Datar so that a plea seeking medical termination of pregnancy could be filed. Datar has helped nine women so far seeking abortion for various reasons when the age of the foetus has crossed the deadline of 20 weeks after which abortion is not allowed as per law.

The parents of the girl, who was allegedly raped by her father’s associate about six months ago, had filed the petition in the Supreme Court seeking permission for medical termination of pregnancy after they realised she was pregnant just four weeks ago.

On 9 August, the parents took her to a doctor to check whether her sudden “obesity” was caused by a thyroid condition. A sonography then showed that she was 27 weeks pregnant. Until that moment, she had not informed her parents about the sexual assault, police have said.

Her father is a street vendor while the mother is a homemaker.

With inputs from IANS and Sanjay Sawant