A 13-year-old girl who became pregnant after being raped by her father’s coworker gave birth to a healthy baby this week, after doctors performed a C-section 32 weeks into her pregnancy.
The young teen had just won the right to have an abortion in India’s Supreme Court. Typically, abortions are only allowed in India up to 20 weeks. Afterwards, a pregnancy can only be legally terminated in the life of the mother is at stake.
Citing the “trauma she had suffered” at the hands of her rapist, the Indian Supreme Court ruled the girl could undergo an exceptional elective abortion to end her pregnancy.
But rather than kill the baby in the process, as is the case in most abortions, doctors at a hospital in Mumbai took the abortion order as a directive to end the girl’s pregnancy early, while still saving the very late-term baby.
From the Daily Mail:
The doctors claim this decision was in line with the Supreme Court order.
'Terminating pregnancy as sought by the Supreme Court means discontinuing the pregnancy and not killing the foetus,' Datar said.
Rather than perform a barbaric D&E abortion procedure, a common third-trimester abortion tactic in which viable unborn children are dismembered in utero and removed from the womb in pieces, doctors instead performed a premature cesarean section, fulfilling the court-ordered early termination order while still managing to save the baby’s life.
While the majority of public interest in her story has focused on the tragic results of rape, this young girl's case brings up crucial point in the debate over late-term abortion.
If a woman elects to undergo a late-term abortion, one in which her viable unborn child can be delivered safely through an induced premature delivery or a voluntary C-section, then performing an invasive abortion procedure specifically designed to end the baby’s life is simply gratuitous, unnecessary murder. While still not ideal, induced premature delivery or a simple C-section is arguably more natural and less physically traumatic than forcing open a woman's cervix, removing the baby in chunks and scraping out the uterus with a blade.
If, on the other hand, the only acceptable procedure for ending a pregnancy early is one that results in a dead baby, then the abortion industry’s agenda couldn’t be more clear: they aren’t interested in simply terminating a pregnancy early. They want dead children, and nothing less will suffice.
As for this case, the Mumbai hospital says the new baby is currently being treated in the center’s neonatal unit and will be put up for adoption.