A 19 year old orphan girl with an IQ of a nine-year-old, became pregnant after an employee of a nari niketan (shelter for destitute women) where she was staying, raped her. The Chandigarh administration detected her pregnancy and got her physical and mental conditions examined. It was concluded that termination of pregnancy was in the girl’s interest. The administration approached the High Court, which allowed the termination of pregnancy.
A group of lawyers led by Ms Tanu Bedi challenged the order of the High Court. The arguement was “Why would a girl, even if mentally retarded, be deprived of motherhood which is her right? Ms Bedi’s arguement was that since the victim was an orphan since childhood and was not aware of the meaning of a blood relation, she had all the more reason to give birth to her baby to know what a family means. The case is being fought by pro-life/pro-choice activists on one side and pro-abortion activists on the other. I don’t know what is Ms Bedi’s interest in this case and why she is fighting it. She may be a good lawyer but does she really know what parenting means ? How can one expect a mentally challenged woman who is also an orphan to take care of a child. A woman with the mental age of 9 years cannot take care of herself, how can she can she be given the responsibility of a baby. Parenting is not an easy job. Is Ms Bedi ready to adopt the baby? If not, as a woman she needs to understand that we are talking about a human baby here and not some material possession.
The Supreme Court has allowed the rape victim to give birth to her child saying that nature will give protection to them. “We are not in favour of termination of pregnancy,” a three-judge Bench headed by Chief Justice K G Balakrishnan said, overturning the Punjab and Haryana High Court order directing the termination of pregnancy. “We stay the operation of the High Court order,” the Bench said in the order. The girl has already crossed 19th week of pregnancy and according to the Medical Termination of Pregnancy Act, 1971, a foetus cannot be aborted once the pregnancy completes 20 weeks.
I would like to know the opinion of my readers on this.
from Vishesh :)
from Reema :)
20 Comments
July 23, 2009 at 2:17 am
This judgement left me speechless! I find the logic of ‘Why would a girl, even if mentally retarded, be deprived of motherhood which is her right’ totally absurd.
As you say, do the activists realise the life that they are condemning the unborn child to? How is she going to look after the child, how is she going to bring it up? Clearly the child will become the state’s responsibility and might well have the same fate as it’s mother..
I just cannot understand the judgement at all..
July 23, 2009 at 11:31 am
I can’t imagine how this helpless girl who could not and still cannot take care of herself will handle this added responsibility. What will become of the child? Did the girl really want the baby… does she know what it means to have a baby?
I wonder if the lawyer will take the responsibility of fighting for ensuring a safe future for both the mother and the child. I am not convinced that motherhood can make her happy.
July 23, 2009 at 3:47 pm
Neither the judges nor that lawyer is going to been seen once the trial is over. Nobody would be around to take care of the baby once he/she is born. What about its daily needs, love and affection, education …? And what about the responsibility of the Rapist towards its own child!!
And how can that girl be mentally or physically capable of becoming a mother!!
GOSH!! Grrrrr…..
July 24, 2009 at 12:48 am
I kind of would not like the girl to have the child, if possible. If its not possible take the child and hand over to an ngo,may be with the girl too. How about getting the rapist to raise the child, under court supervision?
July 24, 2009 at 7:18 am
this is how i look at it:
the 19 year old mother will not be able to look after the kid – and may be the kid will be raised in the institution.
but the judge – ( the state ) also showed that the unborn child had the right to live – prolife. if the state allows termination of pregnancy the state is committs murder -Now that is good judgement.
- now the kid can always get adopted – don’t you think?
July 24, 2009 at 8:07 am
how is nature supposed to give protection?
July 24, 2009 at 9:41 am
I wanted to blog about this, Prerna, but remained busy with other things. Thanks for writing.
From your post and the comments above, it seems the argument FOR abortion seems clear. Let me play devil’s advocate.
I’m not pro-life at all. What I’m concerned about is the government deciding to abort a pregnancy without the woman’s consent. Who can prove IQ tests or psychological profiling are a reliable benchmark of assessing parenting capability? I’m sure in many aspects, this woman will be a much better mother than many mothers of legal age.
Till what point should we allow the government to take the matter in its own hands? IQ of 12 yr old? 15 yr old? How does one decide?
On the other hand, your post does not mention that the woman wanted to keep the child. My civic sense and conscience tell me that if, as a society, we have failed to take care of the mentally handicapped woman, by raping her in a shelter that was supposed to take care of her, we at least owe it to her that we grant her wishes and make the best effort to take care of her child on her behalf.
July 24, 2009 at 12:29 pm
Prerna, this is a very sad case, indeed.
As I see it, the question here is not the morality of an abortion (pro-life or pro-choice question). The law in India states abortion is legal upto 20 weeks.
The question here is whether the State ought to take the decision into its own hands and decide for the girl or whether the girl is capable of deciding for itself.
The judgement of the SC seems to have taken the wishes of the girl as conveyed by her lawyers into consideration and stayed the HC order authorising abortion.
My own view is that if the girl is deemed not able to take care of even herself(she was forcibly brought to Nari Niketan after running away from another shelter), how can she be deemed capable of looking after the child? And will the fate of the child (if brought up in a state-run Home) be the same as its mother?
Sorry- too long comment-I’ve also written a post on this…
July 25, 2009 at 2:01 am
I would agree with Manju here..
as I said the same on her post too..this judgment does not make sense at all..
July 25, 2009 at 2:44 pm
I m really impressed by the way entire India has reacted with their emotions on right to motherhood of a mentally retarded woman…. It touches my heart to see their concern and future of this mother and her child even at the cost of taking the precious time from their own lives otherwise demanding them to concentrate as to what will be their own future ten years from today???????? Bravo….. True samaritan— not bothered about own future but too much concerned by the future of this child n mother…. The only pain i have is why this true concerned heart bleeding to decide the right and wrong for others’ lives works only in mind and no action comes forth to add meaning to the lives of the people, these people are really bothered for and are discussing…………..
Just a request—– before writing anything, please update yourself on law and science please….. I am sure none knows difference between the “mental retardation” and “mental illness”… None knows the category of retardation… none bothered to know that this girl is mildly mental retarded and these category if given proper environment can live their life like all normal high IQ people who despite having sharp mental faculty jump to decide on other person’s rights without even doing their proper home work….The word mental retardation is substituted worldwide with “intellectual disability” and “person with developmental delays”.. The retarded persons are slow learners. They are not insane or unsound mind….
MTP Act itself has excluded retarded persons from definition of mental illness… Please read statute with its amendment— you will find on net…. The abortion cannot be without the consent of woman.
National Trust Act, 1999 is not NGO but an enactment for welfare of mentally retarded persons and says in its preamble that these people have various potential in them and the indian government thru this law would promote their independence…
if get time please read UN convention of 2006 for the rights of disabled to which India is signatory and all rights of intellectually disabled persons are protected including right to vote, hold government office, privacy, parenthood and integrity. The convention aims at treating the disabled persons from being “object” of charity to “subjects” with rights and capable of enforcing those rights. Their right to chose being the most fundamental of all rights…
You could write freely all that you wanted to despite being legally and scientifically absolutely wrong coz your right of freedom of speech and expression is protected under the constitution of india, none can stop you.Similarily everyone’s rights to life and its decisions despite being disabled are protected…
Everyone’s life is very precious….each individual has feelings…. If this girl wanted her child and we are concerned about the welfare of others’ lives, lets help her to get what she wants… If we cannot, then we must keep our opinion to ourselves and not decide others’ lives specially when we dont have adequate knowledge of facts, law and science and are not evolving ourselves with the growth of human civilization…
July 27, 2009 at 1:35 am
@Preciouslife : I understand your sentiments but I am not able to understand your tone. There are polite ways of making your point. I can write your whole comment again in a very polite and unbiased way without all the snobbishness. You really don’t have to be rude or sarcastic to differ.
The writer of the post had a point which she made and she wanted people to write their opinion ‘on the topic’, not on her and her readers’s evolution with the human civilization.
August 3, 2009 at 12:14 pm
Welcome @ preciouslife.I agree with Amit. You have a right to express your opinion but there are polite ways of making your point.
July 26, 2009 at 6:25 pm
How can she can she be given the responsibility of a baby ?
And who if not mother will take responsibility of the child ?
And what if child is not well health-wise ?
This is hurting.
: (
July 28, 2009 at 7:07 pm
A very nice topic indeed Prerna.
Kudos!
This judgment has left my respect for Indian judiciary in tatters.
First of all, it has become a trend to send all the cases to Supreme Court, no matter what the magnanimity is. (i guess it is the influence of hindi movies, “Main Supreme court tak jaunga…”)
Secondly, if the mother cant take care of her child thn neither would Ms Bedi nor the judges come forward for it…!
Typically absurd decision..!
BTW, i would love to knw what happened with the people who raped her…
July 29, 2009 at 8:37 pm
[...] the court’s judgment has been largely negative. See this blog post by Aditi Ray on Sulekha. Prerna’s post has a slew of comments criticizing the [...]
July 30, 2009 at 11:49 pm
My initial gut reaction on reading about this case was – Abort
Since I do not possess an uterus, I am going to stay away from passing my opinion on the Supreme Court’s judgement. Giving birth, as far as I am concerned, is a woman thing. As the saying goes, it takes a woman 9 months to make a child, and a man, 2 minutes.
What I’d like to do instead is share some of the questions and doubts I had
1. There is no doubt that if a child (age 18.
2. When I read through this case the first time, my mind said – “Simple. Abort. Case closed”. But on repeated consideration, I began to have a problem with the term “Mentally Challenged” or “Mentally Retarded”. I mean, if the doctors said that this girl has a mental age of 3 or 4, there is no problem at all. Abort. But 9 troubles me. While I can reliably form a mental picture of someone with a mental age of 3 or 4, I find myself a little challenged when it comes to nailing down a 9 year old. Especially an 18 year old with a mental age of 9. If some of my cousins are anything to go by, I’d be very tempted to say that they can make their own adult decisions, of course, assuming that they did go past the legal age of 18 milestone.
3. But having said that, I cannot get past the stark tragedy of it all. Here is a mentally challenged girl in an orphanage, now potentially about to give birth to a baby, whose statistical chances of leading a happy, well-rounded life are next to none (Judicial hopes nothwithstanding), and we are actually calling this a pro-life position. I find that ironical
So in summary, everything about this case screams – Abort, as that is the rational thing to do but the only thing that throws a bit of a spanner is the objective definition of “mentally challenged”. Now, I have not met the girl, and nor has the media provided us with any critical analysis of the girl’s actual mental maturity. At the end of the day, if the judgement had gone the other way, it would seem like we deprived a person (a legal entity with age > 18) of the right to choose (even if it was the wrong choice). For instance, would our opinion be any different if her mental age was 10? Or 11?
Again, I could be over-analyzing, and perhaps, this is something women can help me understand. If you strongly believe that giving birth is a >18 thing, and requires a mental age of 18, with absolutely no room for compromise, then none of the above are relevant, and my initial gut feeling is valid – Abort.
August 3, 2009 at 12:11 pm
@ Krishashok, my opinion is that a person should be allowed to have a child only when he can take care of the child. People who talk about the woman’s right to have a child should think of the unborn child’s right to a safe childhood.
I saw the mother on ‘We the people ‘ last night. She didn’t seem to be in a position mentally to take care of a young child.
July 31, 2009 at 3:34 pm
No one would be bothered as soon as this current case bites the dust! who is gonna take responsiblity for both of them?
Do you think it is better to put the baby on adoption list as atleast one of them will have a secure future – as who knows the baby in future might also become victim of sexual or physical abuse in the same nari niketan?
August 7, 2009 at 9:44 pm
The girl is stated as mentally challenged…if that’s true… how is she capable of understanding her situation?????? and if the state is incapable of keeping her safe while she was living in a state run institution… then how can the state take care of her and the child????? who knows what will be the fate of the child????? iam pro life… but we should think of the circumstances before making such life altering decision……. in india we donot have enough resources……. the girl will definitely need all the support economical and physical to bring up this child and not to mention lots of counselling after such an ordeal….. so did the cout think of all these issues before ruling……… to me it seems a wrong decision for the girl as well as for the child that will be coming………
September 10, 2009 at 4:17 pm
Hullo Members,
All I wish to say is that life is God given. the young woman has got a chance of bringing life forth, albeit the wrong way it came about. She should be given a chance to beget the child and love the way she was never loved.
Who knows, she might even be a better mother than those women I know with all life can offer that can’t even take care of their children.
We have many babies homes in Uganda. I can vouch that 99% of the children in these homes are from able mothers – what these mothers luck is motherhood. India SC made a superb ruling.