Ahmedabad: Doctors on Friday started the medical procedure to abort a 25-week pregnancy of a minor rape victim after Supreme Court intervened in the girl's favour, in what might be a first of its kind case in the Indian medico-legal history.
The procedure being conducted by a team of five doctors at the civil hospital here to remove the foetus from the 14-year-old girl is expected to take about 24 to 36 hours, doctors said.
"A team of five doctors today started the medical procedure to terminate the 25-weeks pregnancy on the girl. The process, which doctors call as the medical termination of pregnancy, will be conducted like a normal delivery and it is likely to take around 24-36 hours to remove the foetus," Dr MM Prabhakar, Superintendent of Civil Hospital--where the girl is hospitalised, told reporters.
"If this procedure of medical termination of pregnancy will not work until tomorrow, then the doctors will perform a surgery on the girl after that," added Prabhakar.
Prabhakar said the girl was given some drug that will increase the size of the uterus and thereafter foetus can be removed. He said the condition of the girl is good, but she is under severe trauma and that is affecting her mental state.
The law says that termination of pregnancy of above 20 weeks is not allowed. However, in a legal intervention which came as a great relief to the 14-year-old girl and her family, the apex court gave a go ahead for abortion of the 25-week foetus.
"Supreme Court usually does not give permission in such cases. Here they have given it on the peculiar facts of this case," senior advocate in the Supreme Court Kamini Jaiswal, who appeared for the rape-victim, said.
Jaiswal was asked whether this case is the first of its kind of medical termination of pregnancy after court intervention in a case where the foetus exceeded 20 weeks Father of the rape-victim, who was sitting outside the ward number-7 of the civil hospital, said he will be relieved once his daughter gets rid of the pain.
"We are praying that she be fine soon and will go back to our town to begin a new life. She is yet to complete her school studies," he said.
The girl became pregnant after being allegedly raped by a doctor Jatin Mehta whom she had visited for treatment of typhoid earlier this year.
She and her family had to pass through a long drawn legal process for getting the order of termination of pregnancy in their favour as earlier Himmatnagar session court and later the Gujarat High Court had denied permission to abort the foetus as it was older than 20 weeks.
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