South Korea Cracking Down On Abortions

The South Korean government seems to see abortion as little more than a way to regulate population growth, passing anti-abortion laws when it wants birth rates to rise, looking the other way when it wants them to fall, and then cracking down when it needs them to rise again.

When the government wanted to encourage population growth in 1953, an anti-abortion law was passed. But when the population was expanding too rapidly in the 1970's, the government encouraged women to have fewer children with the argument that a smaller population would lead to increased prosperity. This argument was never accompanied by open endorsements of abortion, but clinics flourished throughout the country and earned South Korea the title "the Abortion Republic."

Currently, the South Korean Health Ministry calculates that 350,000 abortions are performed in the country each year, but other estimates place the number at up to 1.5 million. There are about 450,000 births each year, and South Korea has the world's lowest birth rate, with 1.19 babies per woman.

The latter fact has presumably led to a government shift in the attitude towards abortion. Recently, the long-ignored anti-abortion law has been enforced again, and doctors and women are suddenly facing jail sentences and large fines. The price of an abortion has shot up from around the $100-300 range to $1000 or more, and hospitals are no longer advertising abortions. The Health Ministry has talked about setting up a hotline for citizens to report on pregnant women searching for abortions or doctors and clinics offering them, and Dr. Shim Sang-Duk's Pro-Life Doctors group has already reported on three hospitals.

The L.A Times ran a rather disturbingly glowing and self-satisfied article on Sang-Duk's anti-abortion efforts, highlighting his transition from abortion doctor (performing an abortion a day) to anti-abortion crusader. The article takes a righteous pro-life tone, talking about how Sang-Duk despised himself and saw babies as "chunk[s] of blood" but then came around to see the evil nature of abortion once he realized how many women cried after having one.

Neither Sang-Duk nor the South Korean government seem to care at all about the role of women in South Korean society or their reasons for seeking abortions. Kim Hee-young, a women's rights activist with the nonprofit Korea Womenlink, thinks the new attitude towards abortion doesn't address the fact that women have marginal status in patriarchal South Korean culture. Single mothers are frowned upon in a closed, homogeneous society in which traditional gender roles are still very much enforced. One physician states that most abortions are performed because the baby was conceived out of wedlock and the shame, guilt, and exile bestowed on the woman if she followed through with the pregnancy would be unbearable.

The issue here isn't simply whether or not the government legalizes abortion, but whether or not women have a say in the decision to start a family or not. The South Korean government could start placing more emphasis on contraception, still not discussed or advertised in a highly conservative society where sex out of wedlock is seen as shocking. The shaming and shunning of single mothers also needs to be dealt with; otherwise, pregnant single women often feel they have no choice but to abort.

Abortion shouldn't be the only, desperate choice of women whose voices are silenced by their society, and it shouldn't be used as a form of population control by the government. It should be one option for women who have the power, education, and awareness to make informed decisions. Unfortunately, it seems South Korea still sees abortion as one more issue for men to deal with, one more choice they make when and how they feel like it.

Photo credit: Chasing Butterflies