Professor of Law; Vice Dean and Director, Centre for Justice, Law and Society, Jindal Global Law School, Sonipat, Haryana, INDIA.
Independent Advocate, Bombay High Court, Mumbai, INDIA.
Indian J Med Ethics. 2024 Jan-Mar;IX(1):48-57. doi: 10.20529/IJME.2024.002.
The law ought to ensure that reproductive health services are accessible to all persons - married or unmarried - without subjecting them to heightened scrutiny or procedural requirements. However, the intersection of various laws and their impact on the willingness of medical professionals to offer abortion and reproductive health services to adolescents makes timely, safe, and affordable abortions difficult for adolescents to obtain. This challenge is exacerbated by a lack of public healthcare facilities, particularly in rural areas, and the overall restricted access to healthcare services during the Covid-19 pandemic. We delve into how legal uncertainties and gaps in multiple legislations pose obstacles for adolescents seeking abortion services, particularly in consensual sexual relationships. We specifically examine the unintended barriers stemming from the Protection of Children from Sexual Offences Act, 2012 (POCSO), which categorises consensual sexual relationships among adolescents as sexual offences without recognising their evolving sexual autonomy. Notably, POCSO includes a mandatory reporting provision, compelling the reporting of all sexual offences involving a "child" to law enforcement. This complexity is further compounded by the requirement for third-party authorisation for abortion by medical boards. The Indian courts, in rendering inconsistent, moralistic, and biased judgments on adolescent access to abortion services during the Covid-19 pandemic, contributed to the complexities.
法律应当确保生殖健康服务面向所有人士提供，无论已婚还是未婚，而不应对他们进行更严格的审查或程序要求。然而，各种法律的交叉及其对医疗专业人员提供堕胎和生殖健康服务给青少年的意愿的影响，使得青少年难以及时、安全和负担得起地获得堕胎。这一挑战因缺乏公共医疗设施而加剧，特别是在农村地区，以及在 COVID-19 大流行期间整体上对医疗服务的有限获得。我们深入探讨了法律的不确定性和多项立法中的差距如何给寻求堕胎服务的青少年带来障碍，特别是在双方自愿的性关系中。我们特别研究了源自 2012 年《保护儿童免受性侵犯法案》（POCSO）的意外障碍，该法案将青少年之间的双方自愿性关系归类为性犯罪，而没有认识到他们不断发展的性自主权。值得注意的是，POCSO 包含一项强制性报告规定，要求向执法部门报告所有涉及“儿童”的性犯罪。这种复杂性因医疗委员会对堕胎需要第三方授权的要求而进一步加剧。印度法院在 COVID-19 大流行期间对青少年获得堕胎服务的不一致、道德主义和有偏见的判决，使得情况更加复杂。
