Ahmedabad:
A court in Gujarat has denied a 14-year-old girl a late-term abortion after she was allegedly raped by a doctor.
"It did not ask to be born... The child is innocent, just like the victim, its mother," the Gujarat High Court said on Thursday while rejecting the petition filed by the father of the girl.
The court also said India's abortion law does not allow termination of pregnancy after 20 weeks, or five months.
"We don't want to say anything. We have reconciled to our fate," the girl's father, a mechanic from a village in Sabarkantha district, told NDTV.
The father's petition had said the teenager became pregnant in February after she was raped by a doctor whom she had gone to for treatment of typhoid. The doctor allegedly injected her with sedatives and then raped her. He was arrested.
The girl's father told the court that she is too young to take care of a baby.
Judge Abhilasha Kumari said it was a "difficult decision" but added, "Whatever be the circumstances in which the child was conceived, whatever the trauma of the young mother, the fact remains that the child is also not to blame for being conceived."
The girl's petition has been rejected by a lower court too.
"The father of the girl does not have enough resources to take care of the child. They didn't even realize the legal ramifications of the case,'' said social activist Hitesh Patel, who had taken up the case.
Mr Patel said the family is exploring whether to move the Supreme Court.
In April, the same court denied an abortion to a 24-year-old gang rape victim who was more than six months pregnant. The woman later refused to keep the baby, giving custody of her newborn to the state government.