The Body They Ruled Against

What's happening

India's Supreme Court rejected a petition for mandatory menstrual leave on March 13, with Chief Justice Surya Kant ruling that such a policy would make women think they were "not at par" with male colleagues and would deter employers from hiring them.

The ruling exposes a genuine tension. In a country where menstruation remains widely stigmatized and women can be barred from temples during their periods, advocates argue that leave acknowledges a biological reality affecting health, productivity, and dignity. The court argued the opposite: that formal recognition would reinforce the stereotype that women are weaker and unfit for the workplace.

Several Indian states already offer limited menstrual leave. Bihar and Odisha grant two days per month; Karnataka approved one day in 2025. Spain, Japan, South Korea, and Indonesia have national policies. The question is whether honoring the body's needs and protecting a worker's career can coexist, or whether one must be sacrificed for the other.

What the text says

In first-century Palestine, a woman with a continuous flow of blood was more than sick. She was ritually impure under Levitical law. Anyone who touched her became unclean. Anything she sat on became unclean. For twelve years, the woman in Mark's Gospel lived in this condition: excluded from worship, from physical contact, from ordinary participation in community life. Her body had made her untouchable.

Mark 5:27-2927having heard the things concerning Jesus, came up behind him in the crowd, and touched his clothes.28For she said, "If I just touch his clothes, I will be made well."29Immediately the flow of her blood was dried up, and she felt in her body that she was healed of her affliction.

She does not ask. She does not announce herself. She reaches into the crowd and touches his garment from behind, in secret, because the act itself would contaminate him under the purity code she has lived under for over a decade. The healing is immediate. But Jesus stops.

Mark 5:34He said to her, "Daughter, your faith has made you well. Go in peace, and be cured of your disease."

He calls her daughter. In the entire Gospel of Mark, this is the only time Jesus uses that word for anyone. He forces the encounter into the open. The woman wanted to be healed privately, without disrupting the system that excluded her. Jesus refused to let the system stand. He made her visible, named her as kin, and restored her place in the community. For him, healing the body and restoring belonging were the same act.

The reflection

The court's logic is coherent: if the law names menstruation, employers will use it against women. The female body becomes a hiring risk. The solution the court offers is silence.

The text records a different instinct. Jesus did not heal the woman quietly and move on. He stopped the crowd and forced the private body into the public square, because a system requiring women to hide their bodies to participate was itself the disease. The court fears what happens when the law sees the female body. The Gospel asks what happens when it looks away.