Section 29

This provision continues the logic of Section 91 of the old Indian Penal Code, 1860. Lawmakers recognized that consent can excuse many acts (like a risky medical procedure) because the law's concern in those cases is protecting the individual from harm, and the individual chose to accept that risk. But some acts are criminalized for broader public-interest reasons — protecting unborn life, public morality, or third parties — not merely to shield the consenting person. In those cases, allowing consent to erase criminal liability would defeat the law's real purpose. Illegal miscarriage was the classic example lawmakers used: even if a pregnant woman agrees to it, the act remains illegal because the law's target is the act itself, not just the harm to her.

Indian courts have historically read the equivalent IPC Section 91 narrowly and consistently: consent exceptions (like Sections 87-89 IPC, now 25-27 BNS) are limited to situations where harm to the consenting individual is the *only* basis for treating the act as criminal. Courts have applied this reasoning particularly in cases involving illegal abortion/miscarriage, holding that a woman's consent does not shield a person who performs an unlawful abortion, because the law criminalizes the act to protect potential life and public health, not solely to protect the woman from harm to herself.

• Myth: If a person consents to something happening to their own body, the act can never be a crime.
  Fact: Consent only excuses acts that are crimes solely because of harm to the consenting person. If the act is illegal for other reasons too — like protecting an unborn child or public interest — consent does not make it legal.
• Myth: The miscarriage illustration means all abortions are illegal.
  Fact: The illustration only shows how the principle works; miscarriage caused in good faith to save the woman's life is expressly excluded and remains lawful, and other abortion laws separately govern when termination is permitted.