Health Ministry Pushes For Law Amendment Allowing Abortion to Single Women

The Health Ministry is pushing to amend the Medical Termination of Pregnancy (MTP) Act to allow women, regardless of her marital status, can opt for an abortion. This new development is said to remove discrimination among women, especially to those who are single.

A report from IBT says that a senior official of the Union health Ministry has stated that they are very keen to push such amendments after conducting numerous consultations with their stakeholders. "We have said any woman who wants an abortion, whether she is single or married, can opt for it," adds the senior official.

The MTP law has been labeled to be discriminative as only the married woman's rights are covered by its description. The current law states that a married woman can undergo a medical abortion if there is presenting evidence of failure contraceptives. What makes this law also flawed is the fact that there are numerous reports of deaths of single women who underwent abortion conducted by untrained personnel.

The amendment will take effect as soon as the Health Ministry's recommendations get the approval of the Cabinet and the Parliamentary, as reported by the Daily Mail. This will probably happen within the next twenty weeks.

Also included in the Ministry's recommendations is adding a provision to include training doctors, midwives, and nurses to perform non-invasive abortion procedures as well as added training in Homeopathy and other schools of traditional medicine.

Once this amendment is implemented, this will make abortion "universally legal". There has been no reaction yet from anti-abortion groups.