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In a first, the Punjab and Haryana High Court has ruled that a husband cannot compel his wife to conceive and give birth to his child. Making it clear that relationships that know no limits too have boundaries, the high court has asserted intimacy is one thing, giving birth to a child another.
“Mere consent to conjugal rights does not mean consent to give birth to a child for her husband,” Justice Jitendra Chauhan of the High Court has asserted.
The judgment, pregnant with significance, also makes it amply clear that “to have and to hold, for better, for worse, for richer, for poorer, in sickness or in health” does not give a man the right to prevent his wife from going in for an abortion.
The ruling came on revision petitions filed by Chandigarh-based gynaecologist Dr Mangla Dogra and others petitioners. The controversy in the case hovered around the decision of a wife to go in for medical termination of pregnancy without her husband’s consent.
Married in April 1994, the couple and their son were initially staying in Panipat. Due to "hostilities and strained relations”, the wife started staying with her parents, along with her son, at Chandigarh.
