Mumbai, India, Aug 5, 2008 / 22:11 pm
Cardinal Oswald Gracias, the Archbishop of Bombay, on Sunday appealed to a couple seeking legal permission to abort their unborn child due to its congenital heart defect, asking them to stop seeking legal permission to abort the 25-week-old fetus. Cardinal Gracias promised that the Church would take care of the baby if it were allowed to be born.
In the most recent development, a court in Mumbai on Tuesday rejected parents Niketa and Haresh Mehta’s petition to be allowed to have an abortion, the BBC News reports.
Under India’s laws, abortions are not permitted after 20 weeks into a pregnancy unless it poses a threat to the life of the mother. The Mhetas’ case is considered a key test of India’s abortion law.
The Mumbai High Court called together a committee of doctors to assess the risks if the pregnancy continued and also the risks if an abortion was performed on the woman. The doctors held that there was a lesser chance of the baby being born without a handicap, while a late-term abortion would be risky for the mother.