Directions: Read the given passage carefully and answer the questions that follow by selecting the most appropriate option.

On October 16, in X vs Union of India, the Supreme Court of India declined permission to a woman who was seeking to terminate a 26 week-long pregnancy. A Bench presided over by the Chief Justice of India (CJI), D.Y. Chandrachud, held that the woman’s case fell outside the scope of the Medical Termination of Pregnancy (MTP) Act, 1971

The Court said the statute permitted the termination of pregnancy beyond 24 weeks only in cases where the foetus exhibited substantial abnormality, or where the woman’s life was under direct threat. Here, since doctors would have to terminate a “viable foetus”, the Court rejected the plea to exercise its extraordinary powers.

The judgment falls short of bestowing any explicit rights to the unborn. But the upshot of its conclusion is just that: when a foetus becomes viable, and is capable of surviving outside the mother’s uterus, the woman’s right to choose stands extinguished, barring circumstances where the specific conditions outlined in the MTP Act are met.

In so holding, the judgment suffers from at least two errors. The first stems from the Court’s failure to ask itself what ought to be seen as central questions to resolving the dispute: Does a foetus enjoy an autonomous moral status? Does it have legal standing? Is it capable of exercising constitutional rights? The judgment does not engage with these questions and, as a result, places the rights of a foetus at a pedestal, above that of the rights of a pregnant woman to her privacy and dignity.