Bombay High Court Questions Rights of Women with Intellectual Disabilities
The Bombay High Court is examining the rights of a woman with intellectual disability to continue her pregnancy amid a legal challenge.
Bombay High Court, Mumbai, India, Intellectual Disability, Pregnancy, Legal Rights
Mumbai: So, there’s this case going on in the Bombay High Court that’s raising some serious questions. A 27-year-old woman, who has some intellectual challenges, is pregnant, and her dad wants her to terminate the pregnancy. He claims she’s not in the right state of mind to be a mom.
The court, though, is digging deeper. They had the woman checked out by a medical board, and guess what? The board found that she’s not mentally ill but has borderline intellectual disability. Her IQ is around 75, which is below average, but not enough to say she can’t be a mother.
The judges pointed out that everyone has different levels of intelligence. They asked, just because she’s not super smart, does that mean she shouldn’t have the right to be a mom? They really seemed to think that would be unfair and against the law.
Now, the law says that if a woman is mentally ill, she can terminate a pregnancy after 20 weeks. But the court noted that this woman hasn’t been declared mentally ill; she’s just on the borderline. They also mentioned that the baby is healthy, so it’s not like there are any issues there.
Interestingly, the woman has now told her parents who the father is, and the court suggested that her parents should meet him to see if he’s willing to marry her. They’re both adults, after all, and it’s not a crime to talk about it.
The woman was adopted by her parents when she was just five months old, and the court is urging them to step up and support her now. They’ve scheduled another hearing for January 13 to continue this discussion.