KATHMANDU, FEBRUARY 16
Shradha Adhikari, who is a nurse with Sunaulo Parivar Nepal clinic in Kathmandu that provides reproductive health services, including safe abortion, feels pride for having an opportunity to providing safe abortion services to women and girls who would otherwise have opted for unsafe practices leading to risk of her life. She, however, lives in constant fear of facing criminal cases for providing abortion service.
Some of my friends, who have provided safe abortion services, have been asked to report to police or record their statement in the court and I always fear that I might face the same situation, Adhikari added.
Dr Abdul Raif, Head of Clinic Service, Department of Sunaulo Parivar Nepal, said that abortion services should be treated as all other health services and there should be no restriction of any kind, even the period of pregnancy.
Contradictory provisions of the National Penal Code which allows abortion till only 18 weeks of pregnancy in case the victim conceives as a result of incest and rape, and the provision of The Safe Motherhood and Reproductive Health Rights Act which allows abortion in such cases till 28 weeks of pregnancy compounds fear among the service providers.
As abortion remained criminalized under the current laws, service providers cannot provide abortion service to those women who have more than 28 weeks of pregnancy even if there is a possibility that the foetus could be born with congenital defects/ deformity.
Senior Advisor of Marie Stopes International in Nepal KP Upadhyay said that safe abortion services are provided by following the guidelines and rules published by Ministry of Health and Population, and there was no reason for having negative view about abortion.
He said when women are denied abortion service by health professionals for any reason, chances of pregnant women seeking alternatives and ending up having unsafe abortion are high.
According to a research report prepared in 2024, by ANSIRH, CREHPA, UCSF, among women who were denied services at health facilities, 60 per cent attempted to obtain abortion services elsewhere. Of these, 38 per cent attempted to obtain abortions from unsafe or legally unrecognized providers or facilities.
Advocate Nabin Kumar Shrestha, who is Programme Officer at Forum for Women, Law and Development told THT that although reproductive health rights were guaranteed as a fundamental right in the constitution, people often accuse women seeking abortion of committing a crime, Shrestha said adding that police were still filing case against service seekers and service providers in different districts for aborting foetus.
According to Shrestha, an underage girl from western Nepal, who was a victim of rape was forced to deliver the baby as her pregnancy was slightly more than 28 weeks. Another 14-year -old girl was given abortion pill but the girl was prosecuted and the family member and pharmacist who gave the bill to the girl were not prosecuted. Similarly, a 17-year-old girl who had taken abortion pill was prosecuted even when the abortion might have been induced by heavy work that the girl had performed.
Roshana Pradhan who is a Legal Advisor of Centre for Reproductive Rights for Asia, said that the government needs to take immediate steps to decriminalize abortion in all cases by amending the SMRHR Act to remove all the grounds acting as barriers to accessing abortion, and by repealing abortion-related provisions from the National Penal Code 2017 to ensure neither women nor health services providers are prosecuted.
Pradhan said the CEDAW had in 2018 recommended the government to allow women to terminate pregnancy if their life was in danger.
In the 2021 UPR review, France recommended Nepal to decriminalise abortion and our government accepted the recommendation, she added. The World Health Orgnisation Abortion Care states that decriminalization means removing abortion from all penal/criminal laws, not applying other criminal offences (e.g. murder, manslaughter) to abortion, and ensuring there are no criminal penalties for having, assisting with, providing information about, or providing abortion, for all relevant actors.
According to UNFPA data released in 2022, Nearly half of all pregnancies, totalling 121 million each year throughout the world, are unintended and Nepal is no exception to it. According to research conducted by Abortion Incidence and Unintended Pregnancies in Nepal 2023; FWD and Ipas Nepal, about 52 per cent of abortions are still being carried out through unsafe methods.
According to Nepal Police data, in 2023/24 fiscal year, there were 31 cases of illegal abortion and 55 perpetrators.