MEDICAL ETHICS VERSUS CONSTITUTIONAL REMEDIES: A CRITICAL REVIEW OF THE SUPREME COURT’S CURATIVE MANDATE IN THE AIIMS 30-WEEK GESTATIONAL EXCEPTION CASE

In April 2026 the Supreme Court permitted a fifteen year old rape survivor to terminate a thirty week pregnancy, and later dismissed a curative petition filed by AIIMS against that order. This article argues that the outcome was correct and the Court's reasoning on institutional standing sound, but that the route taken, an Article 142 order operating beyond what the Medical Termination of Pregnancy Act permits, departs from the Court's own settled limits on that provision rather than applying them. Tracing seven precedents from Suchita Srivastava through the 2026 decision, the article shows Parliament has left survivors of child rape without a statutory gateway past the gestational ceiling. It examines AIIMS's curative petition against the threshold the Court itself set in 2002, addresses the clinical ethics the institution raised, and closes by setting out what a legislative amendment would need to contain.