Safe abortion ought to be considered a non-criminal issue, accessible to everyone and decided upon by the person who is pregnant. The current legal framework jeopardises the complete wellbeing of women, leaving them confused, scared and unable to attain medically safe and affordable abortion services. Criminalisation has a chilling effect on the provision of sexual and reproductive health services. Hence, there is an urgent need to decriminalise abortions in order to allow women to have full power over the decisions regarding their reproductive autonomy. Abortion ought to be removed from the criminal domain and be considered within the gender justice framework as an issue of equality and non-discrimination. Not only do barriers to abortion access lead to unsafe abortions and high maternal mortality rates, they also place an extraordinary burden of childrearing on women. In this paper, I first argue that decriminalisation of abortion is crucial for women to exercise all their rights freely, including the right to equality. Second, the issue of access to abortion is not limited to women and girls only. It is important that approaches to abortion rights take into account multiple stakeholder perspectives, including from transgender, intersex and gender-variant persons. Finally, I argue that restrictions on abortion services disproportionately impact women from Dalit and indigenous communities due to the marginalization resulting from their compounded identities. Thus, for legal reforms to be meaningful, a diverse and inclusive consultative process is necessary.

Dipika Jain, Time to Rethink Criminalisation of Abortion? Towards a Gender Justice Approach, 12 NUJS LAW REVIEW 21, (2019).