Times of India: New Delhi: Wednesday, 30 April 2014.
More than 50
abortions are carried out daily in Delhi's government hospitals, RTI data has
revealed. In four years, there were 88,188 abortions.
Medical
Termination of Pregnancy (MTP) is legal and it allows abortion on medical
grounds, including abnormalities in the foetus, contraceptive failure and risk
to the mother's physical and mental health.
Rajhans
Bansal, the activist who filed the RTI, said: "The number of legal
abortions taking place in public hospitals is very high. It should be
investigated if people are using medical ground as an alibi for sex-selective
abortion. In private sector, it is common."
The RTI data
reveals in 2008-09, total 40,238 children were aborted in Delhi's public
hospitals. There was a drastic decline in the number of abortion next year with
figures coming down to 13, 850 but it went up again in 2010-11 with 15,157 such
cases. In 2011-12 again, nearly 19,000 abortions were conducted across
hospitals. Bansal said he applied for the information more than a year ago but
received the reply only recently after approaching the Central Information
Commission.
Dr D K Dewan,
director of the Delhi's health and family welfare department, refused to
comment on the RTI data. "I cannot talk about it right now. You have to
meet me in person for that," he said.
Dr Suneeta
Mittal, former head of the gynaecology department at AIIMS, said desire to
limit family size or space pregnancies is the commonest cause for MTP.
"Sex selective abortion cannot be ruled out completely. But they are more
common in small clinics operating illegally and not in government-run
institutions," she said.
Dr Mittal led
a study to review the demographic profile and assess the concurrent
contraceptive acceptance in women seeking medical termination of pregnancy that
was published in Indian Journal of Public Health in 2009. It revealed 15,726
women came for induced abortion in the years 1995 to 2007 at AIIMS and the mean
age and parity of women was 27.6 +/- 5.3 years and 2.5 respectively with 63%
between 25-29 years, 99.1% married and 72% with three or more living children.
Majority of
married (92.5%) and 12% unmarried women reported in the first trimester of
pregnancy. Nearly 40% were not using any contraception at the time of
conception and only 4.2% used oral pills or intrauterine contraceptive device.
The main reasons for seeking abortion were enough children (56%), unplanned
pregnancy (14%), contraceptive failure (10%), previous child very young (7.5%)
and others (12.5%).
The
concurrent contraception accepted was 95.54% with 56.32% sterilization, 37.84%
IUD, 0.75% and 0.5% oral pills and DMPA respectively.
Ranjana
Kumari, director Center for Social Research, said the figure on abortions in
public hospitals is just a tip of the iceberg. "More than 80% of medical
abortions take place in private nursing homes and by private
practitioners," she said.
.JPG)
.JPG)
