A baby, whose mother was denied permission by the Supreme Court to end her pregnancy at 27 weeks, died at Mumbai’s KEM Hospital, the Hindustan Times reported on Friday. The boy was born with a neurological disorder on July 4 and died a fortnight ago.
The mother had moved the apex court in March after the foetus was diagnosed with Arnold Chiari Syndrome Type-II , a neurological disorder in which fluid accumulates in the brain and spinal cord. Doctors told the Hindustan Times that children with this disorder have very slim chances of survival.
The woman had approached the top court as abortion is legal in India only up to 20 weeks of pregnancy under the Medical Termination of Pregnancy Act. The bench, however, had rejected her plea saying that the baby could be “born alive” during abortion.
Gynaecologist Nikhil Datar, who had helped the woman file the petition, blamed the municipal corporation-run hospital for not detecting the malformation in the foetus earlier. “Just because an arbitrary or unscientific deadline has been crossed does not mean the outcome will change,” he told The Times of India. “There is no point in further traumatising a woman, the baby as well as an entire family by prolonging life.”
Dr Datar has been fighting to raise the abortion deadline from the present 20 weeks to 24 weeks.
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