The Bombay High Court recently made a stark distinction between ‘mental health’ and 'mental illness' in order to allow an 18-year-old woman to terminate an unwanted 26- week pregnancy on the ground that further continuation of the pregnancy would affect the mental health of the mother drastically.
The Bench of Justices Ujjal Bhuyan and Madhav Jamdar relied upon the judgment in the case of Sidra Mehboob Shaikh v. the State of Maharashtra, among other pronouncements, to construe that mental health is a wider concept that encompasses mental health within it.
“Many individuals with poor mental health may not be formally diagnosed with any mental illness”, the order stated.
Hence even though they sounded similar, the expressions mental health and mental illness are not the same, the Court held.
Factual Background
The Court was dealing with a petition filed by an unmarried 18- year old woman whose socio-economic background was vividly weak. Compelling a girl of tender age to have an unwanted child may lead to disastrous consequences for the rest of her life and also her family, the Court
observed.
The order was passed despite the fact that a report from the Medical Board stated that there are no medical or mental reasons signaling termination. The Board has been constituted to specifically test the woman’s physical and mental condition.
“Mental condition that the patient suffers from does not fulfill the criteria of a substantial risk of causing grave mental injury to the mother”, the report had stated, concluding that termination of pregnancy was not warranted in the present case.
The Court noted that the woman’s socio-economic background was not taken into consideration by the Medical Board in its report. While considering Section 3 of the Medical Termination of Pregnancy Act, 1971 the Court held,
"Subsection (3) as extracted above mandates that while taking the decision as to whether the continuance of the pregnancy would involve such risk of injury to the health of the mother, account may be taken of the pregnant woman’s actual or reasonable force able environment which expression was elaborately explained by us in Sidra Mehboob Shaikh."
Thus, the Court permitted the woman to terminate the pregnancy.
Case Details
Before: Bombay High Court
Case Title: XYZ v. State of Maharashtra
Coram: Hon’ble Mr. Justices Ujjal Bhuvyan Madhav Jamadar
Read Order@LatestLaws.com
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