Buck v. Bell, India Style

The BBC reported today on a judgment by India's Supreme Court holding that a mentally challenged young girl could not be forced to abort her unborn child against her will: http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/south_asia/8222689.stm

Nineteen-year old "Lakshmi," who had been found wandering the streets of Chandigarh two years ago and was then housed in a government-run care home, was raped by a guard at the home.  She became pregnant.  Even though the Indian National Trust for the Welfare of Persons with Autism, Cerebral Palsy, Mental Retardation and Mental Disabilities offered to provide care for Lakshmi and her baby, the officials of the home sought an order of the High Court of Punjab and Hiryana (Chandigarh is the capital of both, which are served by a single High Court) to mandate an abortion because, they asserted, Lakshmi had the mental level of an eight-year old.

Advocate Tanu Bedi took the case on behalf of Lakshmi to the Supreme Court that apparently held that Lakshmi's wishes should prevail (I say apparently because I have not yet been able to find the text of the judgment).

Eighty years ago Justice Oliver Wendell Holmes, Jr. famously sustained the constitutionality of a Virginia law mandating sterilization of the mentally infirm by observing that "three generations of imbeciles are enough" in Buck v. Bell, 247 U.S. 200 (1927).  Never mind that Carrie Bell was not feeble-minded and that, like Lakshmi, was impregnated as a result of rape and had then been institutionalized to save her family's reputation.  See Paul A. Lombardo, "Three Generations, No Imbeciles: New Light on Buck v. Bell," 60 N.Y. Univ. L. Rev. 1 (1985).

The eugenics agenda behind Virginia's statute and implicit in Holmes's opinion have been discredited biologically and morally (see the United Nations resolution "Declaration on the Rights of Mentally Retarded Persons:" http://www2.ohchr.org/english/law/res2856.htm).  It is gratifying to know that India's Supreme Court recognized Lakshmi's human dignity and vindicated her rights.  If only the rights of her child had similar judicial protection.