The standard procedure exists so nobody has to come to court: MP HC permits a termination past 24 weeks
Applying the protocol a Division Bench laid down in February, the Court clears a termination beyond the statutory ceiling after fresh verification of the survivor’s fitness.
The Medical Termination of Pregnancy Act sets twenty-four weeks as the outer limit for the categories of women the Rules identify, and beyond it a court has to be approached. On 21 September 2026, at the Indore Bench of the Madhya Pradesh High Court, Justice Sandeep N. Bhatt granted permission for a termination past that ceiling, directing the doctors concerned to perform the procedure after fresh verification of the survivor’s physical and mental fitness.
The order is short. What gives it wider interest is the framework it applies — a standard operating procedure laid down by a Division Bench of the same Court in February 2026, designed so that cases of this kind reach a decision without the delay that the delay itself makes fatal.
The statutory ceiling, and who is inside it
Rule 3B of the Medical Termination of Pregnancy Rules, 2003 lists the categories of women eligible for termination up to twenty-four weeks under Section 3(2)(b) of the Act. They include survivors of sexual assault, rape or incest; minors; women whose marital status changes during an ongoing pregnancy, through widowhood or divorce; and other categories the Rule specifies.
Where the gestational age exceeds twenty-four weeks, that route closes and the writ jurisdiction opens. This case fell on that side of the line.
The protocol the Division Bench wrote
In In Reference (Suo Motu) v. State of Madhya Pradesh, decided on 20 February 2025, a Division Bench had issued directions covering precisely this situation: where the age of the foetus or the pregnancy of a survivor of sexual assault, rape or incest exceeds twenty-four weeks.
The procedure begins at the police station. Whenever a case of rape is registered, the Station House Officer, acting on the medico-legal case record indicating pregnancy, is required to set the prescribed steps in motion rather than wait for the survivor or her family to find their way to a lawyer.
Two safeguards in those directions are worth noting. The first preserves clinical autonomy: nothing in the SOPs is to be construed as abridging or limiting the power of the medical officer or Board to terminate a pregnancy where that is necessitated under Section 3(2B) or Section 5(1) of the 1971 Act or other applicable provisions — the provisions that permit termination where it is immediately necessary to save a woman’s life or where substantial foetal abnormalities are diagnosed.
The second addresses the criminal case that runs alongside. Any forensic evidence or foetal material collected in the course of the termination must be preserved for DNA profiling or other investigative purposes, in the same manner as Rule 6(6) of the Protection of Children from Sexual Offences Rules, 2020 provides. A termination granted on humane grounds is not permitted to destroy the evidence on which a prosecution may depend.
The constitutional backdrop
The order situates itself within reasoning the Supreme Court has developed on reproductive autonomy, which the judgment reproduces.
The ambit of reproductive rights is not restricted to whether a woman has children. It extends to the constellation of freedoms and entitlements that enable her to decide freely on all matters relating to her sexual and reproductive health — access to education and information about contraception and sexual health, the choice whether and what contraceptives to use, and the choice whether, when and how many children to have.
On the impact of an unwanted pregnancy, the assessment under Section 3(3) requires account to be taken of the social, economic and cultural factors operating in the woman’s actual or reasonably foreseeable environment — not an abstract medical judgment made in isolation from the life she will return to.
And on where the decision rests: a woman may become pregnant by choice irrespective of her marital status, and where a pregnancy is wanted it is shared by both partners — but where it is unwanted or incidental, the burden falls invariably on the pregnant woman, affecting her mental and physical health. Article 21 recognises and protects her right to undergo termination where her mental or physical health is at stake.
The reason a written protocol matters in this area is arithmetic. Every week spent identifying the right authority, obtaining a board’s opinion and filing a petition is a week the pregnancy advances, and the medical risk of a later termination rises with it. A procedure that starts automatically at the police station, on the medico-legal record, removes the part of the delay that is administrative rather than clinical.
Order
Considering the totality of the facts and circumstances and the observations set out above, the Court granted permission, directing the doctors concerned to perform the procedure after fresh verification of the survivor’s physical and mental fitness, and thereafter to follow the necessary procedure keeping in mind the guidelines given by the Division Bench. The petition was disposed of with that permission, and a copy of the order was directed to be provided to counsel for the State for compliance.