November 27, 2025 01:13 PM IST
First published on: Nov 27, 2025 at 08:00 AM IST
A few developments have recently taken place in Indian courts in relation to the right to mental health. First, the Supreme Court in Sukdeb Saha vs State of Andhra Pradesh read mental health as an integral component of the right to life and personal liberty. Second, the Delhi High Court overturned an order allowing abortion on the ground of grave injury to mental health in the case of a 16-year-old rape survivor. And third, a PIL was filed before the Punjab and Haryana High Court, praying that Section 3(2) of the Medical Termination of Pregnancy Act, 1971, which states that abortion may be provided on the ground of “grave injury” to mental health, be declared unconstitutional.
Treating mental health as negotiable in case of pregnancy, and treating injury to mental health as imaginary unless medically proven, raises concerns around the failure to respect the right to equality and reproductive justice. This is especially so because data suggests that one in three to one in five women in India suffer from mental health problems during pregnancy and after childbirth.
A pregnancy is a health incident and is affected by social determinants like financial stability, nutrition, education, culture, caste and gender-based violence. Viewing mental health in isolation from systemic and cultural issues like son preference, early marriage, intimate partner violence, including marital rape, and contraceptive sabotage undermines its significance in promoting maternal well-being. The issue becomes more layered in cases when a pregnancy is unwanted. Such a pregnancy has a lasting effect on women’s physical and mental well-being. While quantifying mental anguish may be difficult, negating its presence in the case of an unwanted pregnancy suggests a lack of sensitivity to women’s lived realities.
A 2025 report by the Centre for Health Equity, Law and Policy highlights how, despite judicial recognition of mental health as a state of general well-being, multiple courts deny abortion by citing the absence of mental illness. It highlighted that a substantial number of the cases filed exclusively on the ground of injury to mental health between 2019 and 2024 were denied. This raises concerns around how mental health is perceived by the courts.
The Medical Termination of Pregnancy Act itself requires that a woman’s actual or reasonably foreseeable environment should be accounted for to determine whether continuance of a pregnancy would involve risk of injury to health. However, this consideration is often replaced with the pathologisation of mental health. Needing women to become mentally ill to be able to seek abortion violates their constitutional rights to life and liberty, health and dignity. And denying women the opportunity to preserve their mental health violates their right to autonomy and privacy. WHO defines mental health as “a state of well-being in which every individual realises his or her own potential, can cope with the normal stresses of life, can work productively and fruitfully, and can contribute to his or her community”. This definition has been relied upon by courts in multiple cases. Therefore, reducing women’s mental health to the presence or absence of illness is being blind to a robust understanding of mental health, and is discriminatory.
Recognising mental health as integral to reproductive rights is essential for advancing gender equality and public health. This must begin by challenging the lens of familial ideology through which pregnancies are seen and replacing it with women’s lived experiences and autonomy. Safeguarding women’s mental health is not merely about permitting abortion; it is about affirming their right to dignity, choice, and the highest attainable standard of health guaranteed under the Constitution.
The writer is research fellow, Centre for Health Equity Law and Policy, ILS, Pune
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