(Updated 3.18.21) Nepal’s Supreme Court concluded that the government must guarantee access to safe and affordable abortion services. The court ordered Nepal to adopt a comprehensive abortion law establishing a national fund for abortion costs, ensuring stronger safeguards for women’s privacy, promoting access to safe services for all women, and widely disseminating information about safe abortion services to health service providers and the public.  

Background

Background

Since 2002, Nepalese law has permitted abortion under most circumstances, but multiple barriers—including the government’s failure to implement its own policy, prohibitive costs, and inadequate availability of abortion providers—had prevented women from accessing safe abortion services. 

An abortion in a public hospital in Nepal can cost more than the average monthly salary and 80 percent of rural women are unaware that abortion is legal. 

About the case

About the case 

On February 22, 2007, Lakshmi, along with the Center’s Nepalese partners and individual attorneys, filed Lakshmi v. Nepal before Nepal’s Supreme Court. Lakshmi, a Nepalese woman unable to afford the fee for a legal abortion, was forced to continue an unintended pregnancy. The case argued that the government had failed to implement its abortion law and this failure rendered legal and safe abortion largely inaccessible to most of the nation’s women. In addition to playing a crucial role in the development and execution of the litigation strategy for this case, the Center filed an amicus brief. 
 
The lawsuit charged that this was a violation of Nepal’s human rights obligations under international treaties, as well as its own interim constitution, which recognizes a woman’s right to make her own reproductive decisions and obtain reproductive health services. 

About the ruling

About the ruling

In 2009, Nepal’s Supreme Court ordered the Nepal government to enact a comprehensive abortion law to guarantee that women have access to safe and affordable abortion services. Under the Court’s ruling, the government must set up a fund to cover the cost of abortion for poor and rural women, invest enough resources to meet the demand for abortion services, promote access to safe services for all women, ensure stronger safeguards for women’s privacy, and educate the public and health service providers about the existing abortion law. 

In September 2018, government of Nepal enacted umbrella legislation, Safe Motherhood and Reproductive Health Rights Act, as directed by the Supreme Court verdict. The implementing regulation under the Act—Safe Motherhood and Reproductive Health Rights Regulation—was also passed in October 2020. 

Case details Related stories Press