Relevance : GS Paper II
Theme of the Article
Political parties must steer public debate to crucial issues relating to women’s health and reproductive rights.
Why has this Issue been Raised?
The 2019 general election has brought to the forefront hotly contested political issues and promises. But one area of reform that has just not been an important electoral issue is the sexual and reproductive rights of women.
Party manifestos on women reproductive rights
Political parties have addressed reproductive rights in narrow ways.
- For example, the Congress manifesto says the party will pass suitable legislation to make registration of marriages compulsory and to enforce the law prohibiting child marriages.
- The Bharatiya Janata Party’s manifesto focusses on women’s menstruation and says it will ensure that all reproductive and menstrual health services are easily available to all women across India. Further, with the expansion of the Suvidha scheme, sanitary pads at a cost of ₹1 will be provided to all women and girls.
- The CPI(M) has promised to make marital rape an offence and to ensure strict implementation of the Pre-conception and Pre-Natal Diagnostic Techniques (Prohibition of Sex Selection) Act (PCPNDT) Act, which prohibits sex determination tests and female foeticide.
Limited Understanding of Women’s Reproductive Rights
- The above points show the extent to which reproductive rights are understood in India — child marriage, female foeticide, sex selection and menstrual health and hygiene. These are extremely important issues but are selective.
- Sexual and reproductive rights in India must include a concern with maternal deaths, access to maternal care to safe abortions, access to contraceptives, adolescent sexuality, prohibition of forced medical procedures such as forced sterilisations and removal of stigma and discrimination against women, girls and LGBTI persons on the basis of their gender, sexuality and access to treatment.
Data on Maternal Deaths
- India has among the highest number of maternal deaths worldwide-45,000 maternal deaths every year.
- Unsafe abortions are the third leading cause of maternal deaths in India. Half the pregnancies in India are unintended and that a third result in abortion. Only 22% of abortions are done through public or private health facilities.
Factors Responsible for Unsafe Abortions
- Lack of access to safe abortion clinics, particularly public hospitals, and stigma and attitudes toward women, especially young, unmarried women seeking abortion, contribute to this.
- Doctors refuse to perform abortions on young women or demand that they get consent from their parents or spouses despite no such requirement by law. This forces many women to turn to clandestine and often unsafe abortions.
- The Medical Termination of Pregnancy Act, 1971 provides for termination only up to 20 weeks. If an unwanted pregnancy has proceeded beyond 20 weeks, women have to approach a medical board and courts to seek permission for termination, which is extremely difficult.
Efforts by the Supreme Court
- The Supreme Court has been extremely progressive on women’s reproductive rights.
- The court in decriminalising adultery and in the Navtej Johar judgment striking down Section 377 held clearly, that women have a right to sexual autonomy, which is an important facet of their right to personal liberty.
- In the landmark Puttaswamy judgment in which the right to privacy was held to be a fundamental right, the Supreme Court held that rivacy includes at its core the preservation of personal intimacies, the sanctity of family life, marriage, procreation, the home and sexual orientation.
- These judgments have an important bearing on the sexual and reproductive rights of women. The right of women and girls to safe abortion is an important facet of their right to bodily integrity, right to life and equality and needs to be protected.
Way Forward
- Political parties, which also represent India’s women, have an obligation to take forward the debates on reproductive rights, equality, and access to abortion in political debates as well as in framing laws and policies.
- The responsibility also lies with civil society and development actors to bring up these issues for public debate and in demands.
- The silence around unsafe abortions is leading to deaths of women and hides important problems that lie at the intersection of these concerns, such as the formidable barriers for adolescent girls to access reproductive health services, including abortion services. This silence needs to be broken.
Conclusion
The right to safe abortion is an important political issue that must be addressed and widely debated, particularly if parties and leaders are committed to women’s human rights. Access to legal and safe abortion is an integral dimension of sexual and reproductive equality, a public health issue, and must be seen as a crucial element in the contemporary debates on democracy.
