India’s Supreme Court has ruled on 29 September that all women, regardless of marital status, can obtain an abortion up to 24 weeks into their pregnancy. Previously, under India’s abortion law, only married women could have abortions up to 24 weeks while single women were limited to 20 weeks.Aparna Chandra, an associate professor of law at the National Law School of India, who works on reproductive justice said that in this judgment, the Court “breaks away from the stigma that is attached to single women getting pregnant”.The ruling followed from a growing number of court cases nationally of women who felt they had to obtain a court’s permission for an abortion between 20 and 24 weeks whether they were married or not. While it is obviously not enough on its own, this ruling will certainly relieve both women and the courts of time- and money-wasting cases for permission that mainly made these abortions later than they needed to be, often as much as five weeks later. SOURCE: ABC News, by Bhumika Saraswati, Associated Press, 29 September 2022 (Link no longer available)+ VISUAL: AP Photo/Tsering Topgyal, File