Abortion in India: legal, but not a woman’s right

“I wanted to be sterilised when my second set of twins was born,” says Maina Devi. “But my family said that life in our village is too uncertain for such things.”Devi is a 25 year old farmer from Jamunipur, a hamlet in the northern Indian state of Uttar Pradesh, who has two sets of twins under 5 years of age. Her husband refuses to use contraception. She’s not aware that, during her second pregnancy, she could have opted for abortion on the grounds of contraceptive failure. All she does now is pray that she doesn’t get pregnant again.About 885 miles south, Anusha Pilli, a Hyderabad based medic and public health professional, is struck by the lack of awareness about abortion in the city, even among middle class college graduates. “Few of them know about medical abortion drugs available to them, or about the gestation period up to which abortion is…
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