‘No update since 2019’: Korea’s inaction on abortion issue leaves women in limbo

A protest held in November 2020, urging the National Assembly to pass new abortion laws after the Constitutional Court ruling a year prior [NEWS1]

 
It was November 2021 when Kim, a woman in her 30s living in one of the seven largest cities in Korea, terminated her pregnancy at four weeks. She first took pills that she does not remember the name of after being prescribed them at a nearby hospital, but she ended up revisiting a gynecology doctor she had been seeing for a long time after the pills didn’t work.
 
“I asked for an operation and the doctor suddenly turned cold, so I had to look for another hospital,” she said. “She only told me to come back with ‘a guardian,’ and I didn’t get the information that I needed about the operation. I regretted having gone to such a doctor for so long.”
 

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She did safely get her abortion, even though she had to pay 1 million won ($720) in cash, including the supplements that she was prescribed. The new hospital had warm staff who told her that they supported her decision and gave her the necessary information she needed.
 
But it was what came after the operation that haunted her.
 
“I suffered from depression after the operation,” she said. “It became hard to control myself, like having sad dreams or suddenly bursting into tears. My partner and my friend helped a lot, but I really hope that the medical system provides the necessary counseling afterward too.”
 

A protest held in November 2017, urging the Constitutional Court to rule the abortion law as unconstitutional [NEWS1]

Kim is one of many women suffering from the absence of legislation on pregnancy termination in Korea, a situation that has been going on since 2019. Her case was documented by a group that goes by the name of Moimnet — or the Network to Ensure Everyone’s Right to Safe Pregnancy Termination, an alliance of 24 pro-choice advocate associations in Korea — in a study revealed in January containing in-depth interviews with six women who terminated their pregnancies between 2021 and 2023.
 
In April 2019, the Constitutional Court ruled Korea’s decades-old abortion law unconstitutional and ordered the National Assembly to develop a new law in accordance with contemporary social values. It’s 2024, however, and Korea still has no abortion law.
 
The glory of what was once hailed as one of the most monumental and progressive constitutional rulings in Korean history has faded over the course of five years, during which the National Assembly failed to develop and enact a new abortion law, building up confusion and frustration around the issue.
 
The 22nd National Assembly kicked off its four-year term on May 30 with countless items pending the parliament’s decision, ranging from economics and national security to welfare and technology. Will the matter of women’s rights to their bodies be pushed down the National Assembly’s list of priorities once again, where it has sat for the past five years? The answer will reveal itself in the coming months.
 

Abortion rights activists celebrate the Constitutional Court's decision on April 11, 2019, at the court's gates in central Seoul. The Constitutional Court ruled Act 269 of the current Criminal Act, also known as the abortion law, as unconstitutional for the first time in 66 years. [YONHAP]

A five-year open wound
 
The neither-legal-nor-illegal status of pregnancy abortions in Korea goes back five years to the day that was, at first, known as the moment that would open up a new chapter for the human rights of women in Korea.
 
On April 11, 2019, the Constitutional Court enacted articles 269 and 270 of the Criminal Act that made all abortions illegal in Korea, except for pregnancies due to rape or incest or for medical reasons, such as a mother’s disease that could be passed down to a child.
 
The ruling ordered the National Assembly to revise the Criminal Act by Dec. 31, 2020. Four-and-a half years have passed since the due date and there has been no follow-up to this so-called historic ruling, leaving women and doctors in the same lawless, unprotected territory.
 
Because no revision was made by the end of 2020, the abortion ban did technically lose its legal effect starting Jan. 1, 2021. Although this means that people haven’t been getting punished for getting or giving abortions, the operations still need to be paid for in cash and women, cannot be properly protected by insurance or other health policies, including applying for a leave at work.
 
Numerous bills were put forward by different representatives of the 21st National Assembly but none even made it past the parliamentary subcommittee table, and all items had to be discarded with the termination of the previous parliament’s term in May.
 
Should members of the new National Assembly put forward their bills, the items will have to be approved by the subcommittee and then voted on at the plenary meeting, a process that would take at least a few months — if the bills get passed, that is.
 
The Committee on the Elimination of Discrimination against Women (CEDW) under the United Nations (UN) proposed an “alternative legislation upon the loss of force of certain crimes of abortion’ provisions” in its ninth periodic report for Korea in 2022, which was followed up by questions to the Korean delegation during a meeting in Geneva, Switzerland, on May 14.
 

A protest held in November 2020, urging the National Assembly to pass new abortion laws after the Constitutional Court ruling a year prior [JOONGANG ILBO]

In the cold, dark legal vacuum
 
The biggest dangers of the vacancy in legislation are suffered directly by countless women like Kim who are left in the dark about a procedure that significantly affects not only their bodies but their mind also.
 
“Most of our respondents struggled to find credible information or the medical institutions to assist them,” said the Center for Sexual Rights and Reproductive Justice (Share) in a statement.
 
“It is most important that [women] find credible hospitals that can help them manage their health conditions, the termination process and the aftereffects, which many of our interviewees were denied. The prices were greatly different among hospitals, according to the interviewees.”
 
Contrary to other medical procedures that are clearly stated on hospitals’ websites or related blogs, pregnancy abortions are still considered taboo and it is up to the individuals to visit each gynecologist and ask whether they give abortions because they won’t give an answer on the phone.
 
Finding any information online is near impossible, except for very secluded and discrete internet communities where women share their experience with others. Even then, most information is shared through private messages so as not to leave any trace on public spaces.
 

Members of Safe Abortion ? an alliance of 23 civic organizations ? hold a press conference to discuss the next steps to be taken. From left are Arm, Nayoung, Moon Seol-hee, Jay, lawyer Ryu Min-hee and doctor Oh Jeong-won. [YONHAP]

 
A website called Loveplan, funded by the Ministry of Health and Welfare and operated by the Korea Population Health and Welfare Association (KoPHWA), provides information on sex and pregnancy, but only fractionally. A section titled “Pregnancy Termination” lays out the medical details of an abortion — the method and possible aftereffects but not the detailed method of reaching a hospital. The website informs users to call the hotline, but the counselors do not give any specific hospital names, just the fact that women need to call the hospitals themselves.
 
Statistics on abortions have not been updated since 2021 either. The Korea Institute for Health and Social Affairs (Kihasa) reported that around 32,000 abortions took place in 2021, a significant decrease from some 342,000 in 2005 and 169,000 in 2010. Kihasa conducted the research as commissioned by the Health Ministry, but the ministry “has no plan to conduct research on abortions,” according to a ministry official.
 
“The government is postponing the establishment of a consultation system that directs women to actual counseling and medical facilities, even though abortions are not illegal anymore,” a Share official said. “Even the ‘protected birth policy’ is based on the premise that women maintain their pregnancies and give birth, which could only lead to more orphaned children.”
 
The protected birth policy refers to the Special Act on Protection of Critical Pregnancy and Protected Birth and Protection of Children (translated), scheduled to go into effect on July 19.
 
Under the special act, hospitals are mandated to alert the local government whenever a child is born in order to prevent any child from being abandoned or unregistered by their parents. Women who give birth under “critical” situations that make it difficult for them to raise the newborn can request that they give birth anonymously and have the child adopted by a nearby facility afterward.
 
The act has been criticized by both children’s rights organizations and feminist organizations for “encouraging” parents to abandon their child and for denying women the right to abort unwanted pregnancies, forcing them to give birth to remedy the country’s falling birthrate.
 

Abortion-rights protesters cheer at a rally, June 24, 2022, in Des Moines, Iowa. The Iowa Supreme Court reversed a lower court ruling that put a temporary block on the state’s strict abortion law, Friday, June 28, 2024, and is telling the lower court to let the law take effect. The new law bans most abortions after about six weeks of pregnancy and before many women know they are pregnant. [AP/YONHAP]

A helping hand out of reach
 
Making up for the lack of support has been the helping hand of civilian organizations, even though many have been hindered by the government.
 
Women on Web, a nonprofit based in Canada that helps women around the world get access to safe pregnancy termination methods — namely through so-called abortion pills — has provided Korean women with information related to safety measures and referrals to pharmacies to prescribe them abortion pills since 2010.
 
Around 25,000 requests were made by Korean women to Women on Web between 2010 and 2013, according to the organization.
 
The nonprofit’s website was blocked from the Korean internet by the Korea Communication Standards Commission (KCSC) in 2019 for violating the Pharmaceutical Affairs Act by selling medicine that’s not approved in the domestic market. Korea bans the use of abortion pills, the likes of Mifepristone and Misoprostol. The pills are listed as essential medicine by the World Health Organization (WHO).
 
Women on Web appealed the KCSC’s decision but the court sided with the commission. It appealed again, but the court gave a second ruling on May 17, maintaining the website block. The website was also blocked in Spain but Women on Web won a challenge in Spain.
 

Abortion rights activists gather at the U.S. Supreme Court to mark the second anniversary of the Court overturning Roe v. Wade, in Washington, U.S., June 24. [REUTERS/YONHAP]

 
“The Korean court in their decision claimed that women can now easily undergo abortion through surgery without any restrictions. However, this is untrue and misleading,” Sangeetha Permalsamy, outreach coordinator at Women on Web, told the Korea JoongAng Daily in an email interview.
 
“We urge the Korean government to see us as allies. We invite the government to engage with us, to hear firsthand about our service, and to listen to the stories of thousands of women and pregnant people who have utilized our services. Instead of restricting access to resources like Women on Web, we propose that the government collaborate with us and other local abortion rights groups to ensure unrestricted access to accurate health information.”
 
Women on Web began an online campaign by collecting people’s online signatures and encouraging people to file petitions to the Korean government after the May ruling, aiming to inform people that its sibling website is still open and additionally “to increase awareness about censorship and educate the public on how to surpass censorship.”
 
The campaign has been endorsed by international pro-choice groups, including the International Campaign for Women’s Right to Safe Abortion and Amnesty.
 
“We are preparing for a Constitutional challenge alongside Open Net Korea,” added Permalsamy.
 

A protest held in November 2020 with the slogan, ″Feminist=Delusion,″ on the same day that pro-choice organizations held a protest urging the National Assembly to pass new abortion laws [YONHAP]

Not such a bright future
 
The biggest hold-up for an abortion law stems from representatives’ failure to reach a consensus, mainly on how many weeks of pregnancy will be allowed for an unconditional abortion and whether the procedure will only be allowed under certain circumstances from then on.
 
For example, the most progressive bills by members of the Democratic Party and the Justice Party proposed that women be allowed to terminate their pregnancies regardless of the weeks of their pregnancy or the reason for doing so. The conservative People Power Party members argued that abortions should only be fully allowed until six weeks, partially allowed until 10 weeks, allowed under very extreme circumstances — such as the casse of rape, incest or genetic disorders laid out by the previous law — until 20 weeks and then be banned afterward.
 
The situation isn’t any better outside of the National Assembly either, with religious, especially Christian, circles and conservative pro-life organizations opposing the idea of pregnancy abortion as a whole, while pro-choice groups regularly hold protests to urge the National Assembly for a much-belated legal answer.
 
Local news outlet News1 reported on June 20 that the Ministry of Justice is seeking to put forward a guideline making pregnancy terminations legal until 14 weeks to hand in as a bill to the National Assembly by the end of the year. The ministry refuted the report in the same afternoon and said that no details have been decided yet.
 
“We are reviewing the revision as we have been during the past five years, but we do not have specific numbers in mind,” a Justice Ministry official told the Korea JoongAng Daily when asked whether the 14-week recommendation and year-end submission plan were in works.
 

A protest held in September 2018, urging the Constitutional Court to strike down Article 269, the so-called abortion law, of the Criminal Act [YONHAP]

 
The Constitutional Court had stated in the 2019 ruling that “it is rightful for a state to decide on abortions leading up to around 22 weeks of a pregnancy, which is when a fetus is said to be able to survive on its own separately from the mother’s body.” It did not, however, state that a termination should or should not take place afterward.
 
The failure to remedy the legal vacancy is a dereliction of duties on the government and National Assembly’s part, but it’s unfortunately expected to continue for a while, according to Heo Min-sook, research officer at the National Assembly Research Service who has a Ph.D. in women’s studies from Ohio State University.
 
“The most pressing issue for the government and the National Assembly is the country’s birthrate, which indeed is urgent and can seem ‘in conflict’ with pregnancy termination,” Heo said.
 
On July 1, the Yoon administration announced its plan to launch a new government ministry focusing on population strategy, mainly concerning the falling birthrate and aging society.
 
“However, the matter of an unwanted pregnancy is the most desperate one to a woman but the state policy ends up reducing women down only to their ability to produce babies,” Heo continued. “The fact that the great majority of officials at both the government and the National Assembly are middle-aged males aggravates the situation. But the longer the stall, the heavier the burden will build on women’s shoulders.”

BY YOON SO-YEON [yoon.soyeon@joongang.co.kr]