Abortion Consent — MTP Act Section 3(4)(b)
What most people assume
A pregnancy inside a marriage concerns both spouses, so a husband's consent is legally required before an abortion.
What the law actually says
Section 3(4)(b) of the MTP Act states that, except for a minor or a person of unsound mind (who need a guardian's written consent under 3(4)(a)), no pregnancy shall be terminated except with the consent of the pregnant woman. The Act does not list a husband's consent as a requirement at any point.
Who this applies to
- An adult pregnant woman of sound mind, deciding whether to terminate a pregnancy under the MTP Act
Why it exists
The consent structure reflects a deliberate legislative choice to place the decision with the person undergoing the medical procedure, consistent with how consent works for any other medical treatment, rather than treating pregnancy as a decision two people must jointly authorise.
Where the asymmetry is
A husband has no statutory consent right over whether his wife's pregnancy is terminated, even though the pregnancy exists inside the marriage. The Supreme Court's reproductive-autonomy jurisprudence has reinforced this: in X v. Principal Secretary, Health and Family Welfare Department, Govt. of NCT of Delhi (2022), the Court held that requiring third-party authorisation — including a spouse's — is inconsistent with the pregnant woman's autonomy under the MTP framework.
What this does not mean
That abortion is available at any gestational stage, for any reason, from any provider, without satisfying the rest of the MTP Act's conditions — registered practitioners, gestational limits, and the specified medical grounds under Section 3 still apply. The autonomy question (whose consent is required) and the eligibility question (whether the abortion is lawful at all) are separate, and this entry is only about the first one.
Safeguards / limits
- The rest of the MTP Act's conditions still apply regardless of whose consent is required: registered medical practitioner, gestational limits, and the statutory grounds for termination under Section 3
- A minor or a person of unsound mind still requires a guardian's written consent under Section 3(4)(a) — the adult-woman rule in 3(4)(b) is the specific one this entry documents
Ground reality
This is one of the few entries in this Law Library where the asymmetry runs in a direction that surprises people expecting the opposite: it isn’t that the law fails to give a man a say — it’s a deliberate design choice that a pregnancy decision is not a joint-authorisation decision at all, even inside a marriage. The Supreme Court’s 2022 ruling went further than the bare statutory text, explicitly rejecting the idea that a woman’s marital status should require anyone else’s sign-off, and the same judgment separately recognised that a married woman’s pregnancy could result from non-consensual sex within the marriage — a fact pattern the MTP framework has to be able to respond to regardless of marital status.
Why the reader needs to care now
If you are a husband assuming you have a formal legal role in this decision, the accurate starting point is that you do not — not because the law is hostile to husbands, but because it was built around the person carrying the pregnancy having sole decisional authority, the same way any individual controls consent to their own medical treatment.
Related cases
Primary source
Medical Termination of Pregnancy Act, 1971 — India Code →
LAW CHECKED · 12 SEPT 2026