The baby is currently viable that is he will show signs of life and have a strong possibility of survival so we would need a directive from the Supreme Court on whether a foeticide can be done before the abortion.’ This is what an AIIMS doctor wrote in an email to the Supreme Court on 10 October last year. The email changed the course of the debate on abortion in India. The email was written after a two-judge bench of the Supreme Court, on 9 October, allowed a 27-year-old woman, ‘X’, to terminate her 26-week pregnancy. However, after this email, the same bench delivered a split verdict, and then, a three-judge bench rejected the woman’s plea for abortion on 16 October, underlining the importance of balancing the rights of a woman to autonomy and choice, with the rights of an unborn child. And the mail has already begun changing the course of the lives of several women seeking an abortion in India. Last month, the Delhi High Court also recalled an order allowing a widow to terminate her 29-week pregnancy on the grounds that she was going through “immense trauma” and showing “suicidal tendencies” after the death of her husband. The order allowing abortion was recalled after the AIIMS wrote to the high court, saying that at 30 weeks and six days, the foetus “will be alive after delivery”. The debate on the right of a woman to terminate her pregnancy as against the right of an unborn child has been gaining steam in India. And advocate, Dr Amit Mishra, is at the centre of it all. He was representing the women in both these cases, and has brought several such cases to the Delhi High Court as well as the Supreme Court in the last one-and-a-half years. Currently, the Medical Termination of Pregnancy (MTP) Act, allows an abortion up to 20 weeks by a registered medical practitioner and up to 24 weeks of pregnancy only for certain categories of women, including survivors of sexual assault or rape or incest. “The court wants to balance the right of the mother with the rights of the foetus. The judgment refusing abortion to the mother and granting the order in favour of the foetus now the government is citing this case as a precedent in other cases in high courts.” The government is added as a respondent in abortion petitions filed by women. It can then support or object to the petition, and a medical board is also usually constituted in a government hospital.