Sakchie Saluja, Amity Law School, Noida
ABSTRACT
After the Medical Termination of Pregnancy (MTP) Act of 1971, abortion became lawful in India in several situations. Under the Act, the Medical Termination of Pregnancy Regulations, 2003, were released to give women access to safe and authorized abortion procedures.
The MTP Amendment Act 2021, which made several changes to Act 1971, was passed in 2021. These changes included allowing women to seek safe abortion services on the grounds of contraceptive failure, raising the gestational limit for specific categories of women to 24 weeks, and requiring up to 20 weeks of gestation for one abortion service provider's opinion. Due to the MTP Amendment Act 2021 entering into force on September 24, 2021, abortions can now be performed up to 24 weeks into a pregnancy.
Induced abortion refers to a woman having her pregnancy ended willingly by a care provider. The loss of a woman's pregnancy before the 20th week is referred to as a spontaneous abortion, which can be emotionally and physically devastating. It is commonly referred to as a miscarriage.
The World Health Organization (WHO) defines an unsafe abortion as "a method for ending pregnancy done by a person who is not skilled or in a setting that does not correspond to minimum medical standards." However, as abortion technology has improved, this has been replaced by a three-tier classification of safe, less safe, and least safe, allowing for a more nuanced description of the range of varying situations that constitute unsafe abortion and the usage of misoprostol becoming more and more common as a substitute for risky, invasive methods.
Safe abortion is given by medical professionals using techniques that the WHO advises. Less safe abortions are performed by qualified medical professionals using contraindicated procedures or a secure method (such as misoprostol) without appropriate knowledge or assistance from a trained person. The least safe abortion is done by a skilled practitioner employing invasive, risky techniques.
