On October 16, India’s Supreme Court rejected a mother of two’s request for an abortion at 27 weeks, upholding the fetus’ “right to life.”
According to the rules on abortion in India, after 24 weeks, medical termination of pregnancy requires medical proof of danger to the mother or fetus if the pregnancy is allowed to continue.
The next day, October 17, the Supreme Court said “no” to the legalization of same-sex marriage. The verdict, delivered by a divided majority (3-2) by a five-member bench headed by Dhananjaya Yeshwant Chandrachud, Chief Justice of India, rejected the demand for legalization of same-sex marriage, to which the government federal government was strongly opposed.
The legalization of gay marriage, according to the ruling, “can only be done by the legislature” and “any attempt by the court to do so would amount to encroaching on the domain reserved for legislators,” reported the Indian Express, the English language daily. Last April, the National Catholic Register reported on the federal government’s opposition to gay marriage in India.
Welcoming the verdict, the Catholic Bishops’ Conference of India highlighted in a press release that the judgment “reaffirms the institution of traditional marriage, rooted in the sacred teachings and values of the Catholic Church and many other religions.”
While recalling that “marriage, according to the Catholic Church, is an exclusive union between a man and a woman,” the Indian bishops noted that “homosexual unions are fundamentally different from the divine plan for marriage.”
In a press release on October 18, the Syro-Malabar Church, an Eastern Catholic Church based in the south of the state of Kerala, emphasized that, “The verdicts of the Supreme Court refusing the legal sanction of gay marriage and refusing abortion in cases of advanced pregnancy support the dignity of the family and pro-life values.”
India’s mainstream media appears to favor a verdict that would legalize same-sex marriage. The Times of India, for example, the world’s largest English language daily, published an editorial on October 18 with the headline: “Untying the Knot: Do Same-Sex Couples Have the Same Constitutional Rights as Heterosexual Couples? Yes, should have been the Supreme Court’s response.”
Pro-life and pro-family circles welcomed the Court’s two decisions.
The Church in India welcomes two judgments by the Supreme Court of India rendered in the same 24 hours. The first concerns the question of abortion, and the second that of same-sex marriage.