The Medical Termination of Pregnancy (MTP) Amendment Act, 2021, is an Act of the Indian Parliament that amends the half-century-old Medical Termination of Pregnancy Act, 1971. The original 1971 Act was created to reduce maternal mortality by legalizing abortion under certain conditions, carving out exceptions to the criminal provisions for "causing miscarriage" found in Sections 312–316 of the Indian Penal Code. The 2021 Amendment was passed to align the law with advances in medical technology and to expand access to safe and legal abortion services. It received Presidential assent on March 25, 2021, and came into force on September 24, 2021.
The Act significantly changed the gestational limits for termination. Previously, the limit was 20 weeks. Under the amended Section 3, a pregnancy can be terminated up to 20 weeks with the opinion of a single Registered Medical Practitioner (RMP), where the previous single-doctor ceiling was 12 weeks. The upper gestation limit was increased to 24 weeks for "special categories of women," which include survivors of sexual assault, minors, and women with disabilities, requiring the opinion of two RMPs. Crucially, the upper limit does not apply at all in cases of substantial foetal abnormalities, provided the diagnosis is confirmed by a state-constituted Medical Board.
The amendment also liberalized the grounds for termination by extending the provision for contraceptive failure to unmarried women, where it was previously limited to married women or their husbands. This was further reinforced by the Supreme Court's 2022 judgment in X v. Principal Secretary, which held that unmarried women are entitled to terminate pregnancies between 20 and 24 weeks, eliminating the marital status distinction for this period. Furthermore, the Act introduced a confidentiality clause (Section 5A), prohibiting the disclosure of the woman's particulars except to a person authorized by law.