July 10, 2026
By Iqra Manzoor
LAHORE
A recent arrest of three people in Lahore over the termination of a woman’s six-month pregnancy has reignited debate around one of Pakistan’s most taboo subjects: abortion.
The Nawab Town police told Voicepk that on July 4 they foiled an attempt made by three men who were in the process of burying the six month old foetus. The police arrested the three men, along with a midwife who was involved in the abortion. According to the Investigating Officer, the pregnancy was the result of an ‘illicit affair’, which the family wanted to cover up.
The FIR, registered under Section 338-C of the Pakistan Penal Code (Punishment for Isqat-i-Janin), states that the woman told investigators she became pregnant through a consensual relationship, but sought an abortion around the sixth month, with the midwife’s help.
While the police say that the investigation is ongoing, the case lays bare the abortion landscape in Pakistan – where vulnerable women are not given the protection necessary due to the current laws and social taboos.
What the law actually says
Contrary to popular belief, abortion in Pakistan isn’t blanket-illegal. In fact Sections 338 to 338-C of the Penal Code draw a line based on fetal development. Before the fetus’s organs have formed (Isqat-i-Hamal), ending a pregnancy in good faith to save the woman’s life or as necessary treatment is legal. Once organs have formed (Isqat-i-Janin), termination is legal only to save the woman’s life. Punishments vary by stage of pregnancy, consent, and outcome.
Barrister Aasya Ismail, an Advocate of the High Court, explains why this ambiguity matters. She tells Voicepk, that the law is built almost entirely around one narrow exception — “necessary treatment” in early pregnancy, or saving the woman’s life.
“But the law never defines what this ‘necessary treatment’ actually means, and courts have offered little guidance too,” she says. “In practice, that leaves doctors making case-by-case calls under threat of criminal liability, and leaves women unsure whether they can legally abort or not. The uncertainty can create fear among healthcare providers about possible legal consequences. Fear that can translate directly into delayed treatment,” she said.
The law offers no specific provisions for pregnancies from rape or incest, fetal abnormalities, or pregnancies in minors. Robina Shaheen of the AGHS Legal Aid Cell says that the absence of guidelines pushes some women toward unsafe, unregulated abortions while making doctors more hesitant to provide care even when it is legally defensible.
At the same time Barrister Ismail says that there is a growing need for reform, given that the law itself dates back to the colonial period. This does not necessarily mean a complete ‘decriminalisation’, but instead introducing a clearer, more modernized framework built around current medical and public health realities.
A 2024 report, ‘Unsafe and Unjust’, by the Center for Reproductive Rights (CRE) and its regional partner Aahung, backs this up with field research from Sindh. Legal vagueness combined with healthcare providers’ own unfamiliarity with the law, was actively denying women abortion care, independent of what the law technically allows. Healthcare provider, Neha Mankani, who has presented the report’s findings, reveals that abortion services are sometimes withheld as a form of moral punishment rather than treated as a healthcare issue. The report calls for decriminalisation and a clearer legal framework, alongside training healthcare providers to reduce discrimination and stigma in how abortion care is delivered.
Between law and reality
“Abortions have always taken place,” says Robina Shaheen. “Social media has just made it more visible, not more common. Most public hospitals won’t even go near such a case, unless the pregnancy is threatening a life. This automatically pushes women toward maternity homes and visits to untrained ‘midwives’. This is especially true if the pregnancy stems from rape or sexual relations that the families want to keep covered up.”
Meanwhile, an obstetrician/gynaecologist (OB-GYN) with two decades of experience of treating women from the rural areas explains how situations like these play out on the ground.
The scenario is common: an unwanted pregnancy.
If the couple already has five or six children, even if the pregnancy itself isn’t medically risky, it pushes an already stretched family into financial crisis,” she points out. “Most of the time many rural women don’t even realise they’re pregnant until nearly six months in, by which point options are limited. Many women are also anemic, and families can’t afford treatment. Some turn to unqualified practitioners for medicine; if that fails, they go to a traditional midwife. Many girls and women lose their lives because of excessive bleeding,” she says. By the time they reach a hospital, it’s often too late.
The doctor says that stigma adds a third track entirely.
“Women who become pregnant outside marriage, and whose parents, fearing dishonour, bypass qualified doctors altogether and covertly go straight to a midwife,immediately raise the risk to her life.”
Another doctor, speaking to Voicepk on condition of anonymity, pointed to a systemic gap behind these individual choices: weak family planning services mean unwanted pregnancies among married couples are common, and those patients go to private clinics rather than government hospitals.
Unmarried couples, she said, avoid seeking consultation openly at all. The real danger in unsafe abortions, she added, isn’t the procedure itself but how it’s done: no sterilization, no proper equipment, an untrained provider; a combination that often leads to serious infection. “Doctors face little difficulty performing abortions that are already legally permitted, for medical necessity or to save a woman’s life; the problem is everything happening outside that narrow legal window,” she said.
The situation explained by the doctors is reflected in the national statistics.
A 2024 Population Council study, done in collaboration with the Guttmacher Institute, estimated 66 abortions per 1,000 women with complications in 21–30% of cases. Rural and underserved women bear the brunt of the situation, and 17.3% of women report an unmet need for family planning, driving unintended pregnancies. Maternal mortality sits at 186 deaths per 100,000 live births; contraceptive use has stagnated. Complications have actually declined since 2012 (13.9 to 11.7 per 1,000), but the gaps remain sharp along class and geography lines.
The WHO takes the opposite view, treating abortion as a public health issue rather than a criminal one, and arguing that restrictive laws don’t stop abortions, they just make them more dangerous. The WHO is not alone in that position: by 2020, several UN human rights bodies, including the special rapporteurs on health, extrajudicial killings, and violence against women, had also called for decriminalizing abortion.
When the law moves too slowly
Robina Shaheen recalls a case that captures the stakes: an 11- or 12-year-old girl with physical and intellectual disabilities, was repeatedly raped by her stepfather and stepbrother and became pregnant. Lawyers took the case to the High Court seeking permission for an abortion, but the court ordered medical evaluations first to confirm if she could safely carry the child. By the time the abortion was legally approved, she had already given birth.
“The restrictions haven’t stopped abortions,” Shaheen said. “They’ve just pushed women toward unsafe clinics where they die instead.” Shaheen wants public hospitals to allow safe abortions under proper medical supervision, paired with giving family planning awareness to couples.
Population, and the pressure behind the numbers
Pakistan’s galloping population is a direct result of the lack of family planning. At over 241 million people, Pakistan is the world’s fifth most populous country, adding four to five million people every year — the highest growth rate in South Asia. “Our growth rate is double that of our neighbours,” Dr Zeba Sathar of the Population Council said at the Pakistan Population Summit in December 2025, noting that six million of the 12.7 million pregnancies recorded in Pakistan annually are “unwanted or untimed.”
Recurring issue with vulnerable women
In June 2026, an 18-year-old domestic worker alleged that she had been raped by her employer’s son and driver, became pregnant, and eventually died from complications arising after a back alley abortion. The girl had visited a private ‘clinic’, had the abortion, but her condition quickly deteriorated, and she died at Lahore’s Services Hospital, but not before giving a video statement about the incident.
In 2024, Voicepk reported on Salma* (name changed), who was turned away by health care providers who were afraid of legal exposure after she sought an abortion following a rape-pregnancy by her employer. Salma gave birth and then struggled for years to get her daughter identity documents after the accused rapist and father of the child refused to acknowledge paternity. Lawyers have petitioned the Lahore High Court (LHC) for reform, arguing the current law leaves both rape survivors and doctors in the dark about their rights.
The bigger picture
Whatever the Lahore case ultimately proves in court, it is a reminder that Pakistan’s reproductive health crisis cannot be understood through criminal proceedings alone.
By treating abortion as a crime rather than a healthcare issue, the state ensures the underlying problem stays invisible. Real progress would mean addressing what drives unintended pregnancies in the first place — through access to contraception and family planning — not prosecuting the women and providers left to deal with the consequences.