A couple undergoing fertility treatment has petitioned Bombay high court to permit them to complete their surrogacy procedure that they had begun before the new Assisted Reproductive Technology (ART) Act and Surrogacy Act were brought in.

There is a need to document women's perceptions regarding the quality of their health care, including abortion services, since most studies to date have approached this issue from the viewpoint of service providers, policymakers, or the state (Jesani and Iyer 1995).

The notion of quality in the public health system is becoming increasingly an issue for policymakers and planners in India. The Eighth Five-Year Plan identified the poor quality of family welfare services as one of the factors

Undernourished women tend to deliver low birth weight babies (Karmer, 1987) and to have pregnancy complications (Baird, 1947). Perinatal mortality and prematurity rates were found to be high among short statured women (Barros, 1987).

The health of the general population as well as specific groups (infants, women, etc) has for long been an important concern for development studies.

The Indian Medical Termination of Pregnancy (MTP) Act came into force in 1972, in response to the high mortality and morbidity associated with illegal abortion. However, 25 years on, both restrictions in the law and the way it is implemented through service delivery have failed to meet the aborti

In the last decade, several international and national movements have focused their attention, on the long neglected areas of women's reproductive health.

There is a growing recognition that gynaecological morbidity is an important health problem among poor women in India.

This paper presents a part of the qualitative exploratory study conducted in rural Maharashtra from April 1994 to April 1996 to understand the issue of abortion from women's perspective.