The Supreme Court on Thursday asked the Centre and the Government of Maharashtra to respond to a plea challenging the validity of India's abortion laws by Friday.
The petition was filed by a woman who is in the 24th week of her pregnancy. In her petition, the woman claimed that the foetus inside her has abnormalities and once the baby is born, will cause enormous mental distress to the mother. Therefore, she has requested the apex court to give her permission to terminate her pregnancy.
Currently, India's laws don't permit a woman to go in for an abortion after twenty weeks of pregnancy, but the petitioner and her lawyers have argued that this is a denial of a woman's right to abort in case of extraordinary medical complications.
Further details are awaited.
