On the 16th of March 1998, at the final hearing of the writ petition filed by the All India Democratic Women's Association and the faculty of the Centre of Social Medicine and Community Health of the Jawaharlal Nehru University, New Delhi, the Drug Controller of India gave a written commitment to

This paper analyses, from the perspective of women's human rights, an unsuccessful attempt to amend the abortion law in the Penal Code of Sri Lanka in 1995.