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| Women hold up abortion pill boxes in front of Bosingak, a pavillion at Jongno, downtown Seoul on Aug. 26. 125 women — roughly the number of women who get an abortion every hour in South Korea — gathered to give a Mifegyne-swallowing performance using vitamin pills. / Yonhap |
By Lee Suh-yoon
Women's health is being placed at greater risk in the recent row between the government and OB-GYN doctors over a new regulation that suspends medical licenses for performing abortions — explicitly branding the procedure as "immoral."
On Aug. 17, some 2,500 OB-GYN doctors in the country announced they would boycott all abortions, signaling a new low point in the growing discontent at the nation's 65-year-old abortion ban.
Abortion is banned in Korea by criminal law. Unlike neighboring Japan, where the abortion ban can be overruled for socioeconomic reasons, abortions are only allowed here in cases of rape, high chances of birth defects, or significant health risks for the woman.
Despite the illegality, abortions are widely carried out — a recent survey by the Korean Women's Development Institute showed one in five Korean women have had an abortion. The latest official figure from the Ministry of Health and Welfare says over 169,000 abortions, of which 94 percent were illegal, were carried out in 2010. But doctors' groups estimate some 3,000 abortions are performed every day.
The doctors' boycott is a direct rebuttal to the ministry's decision to categorize abortion under "immoral medical acts," thus opening an official channel for authorities to suspend an abortion-performing doctor's medical license for one month.
Suspending doctor's licenses for performing abortions is not new and has been imposed on 25 doctors in the past five years. But doctors fear the new regulation will make such punishment more commonplace.
Though abortions are common, their illegality makes it difficult for OB-GYN doctors to get hands-on training before entering the field as they can only experience a small number of "legal" abortions before graduation.
Coupled with the lack of official oversight due to the need for secrecy, women are exposed to the danger of botched and unprofessional operations. This was well illustrated by the death of a high school student who died on the operating table while getting an abortion in 2012.
Women, left with even worse options from the recent boycott, are furious.
"Calling abortions immoral medical acts? Are women not included when the ministry talks about public health?" Mina Kim, 26, a member of the local feminist group Femidangdang, told The Korea Times.
Femidangdang was formed to push for an end to the country's abortion ban, just as the abortion debate heated up in 2016 when the ministry first revealed the plan to suspend doctors' licenses.
Kim says she is also angry at the Korean College of Obstetrics and Gynecology, the group that led the boycott, for "holding women's bodies hostage."
"I'm not sure if they made this abortion boycott decision with women's health in mind," Kim said. "Designating abortions as immoral acts or declaring an abortion boycott will not stop abortions; it will just increase the number of dangerous operations that threaten women's health."
Women's groups say the boycott will increase the secrecy of abortion and thus raise the prices even higher.
"When a pro-life doctors' group threatened to report abortion-performing OB-GYN doctors to health authorities in 2010, the price of abortion operations skyrocketed and it became more difficult for women to find doctors willing to perform them," Hong Yeon-ji at Womenlink said.
"This previous crisis lasted until 2013, after which the price of abortions stayed high at around 800,000 to 1 million won. We fear the same kind of situation could make abortions even less accessible," she said. "According to our interviews with women, the price of an abortion was around 400,000 won before 2010, but in 2010 it even jumped to over 1.4 million won."
Doctors, however, say they have no choice. Though the ministry says it will only passively enforce the regulation for cases convicted at court, doctors say the ministry's move is still crushing their livelihood.
"A one-month suspension of a medical license is like a death sentence to an OB-GYN clinic," Kim Dong-suk, head of the Korean College of OB-GYN, said in a phone interview with The Korea Times.
"You can't just open the clinic again when word gets around in the whole neighborhood that you're running an immoral clinic," Kim said referring to how the recent government regulation regards abortion in the same category as reusing injection needles or sexual harassing patients.
The biggest irony, however, is that the government's move for tighter control has come when calls for legalizing abortion are on the rise.
In September last year, more than 230,000 signed an online petition calling for the legalization of abortion and for the abortion pill, Mifegyne, forcing the government to issue an official response promising "a new balance" on abortion through a thorough research into the actual situation of abortion in the country.
And in May this year, the Constitutional Court held a high-profile debate on the constitutionality of the abortion ban before making its decision on the issue.
However, the ruling was delayed indefinitely, the Constitutional Court confirmed with The Korea Times, Thursday. And the promised government research has not been started for the past two months.
Women can be subjected to one year in jail or fined 2 million won for having an abortion, and two years in jail for the doctor. But the punishment has rarely been imposed, except for cases in which a handful of spiteful male partners report them to the authorities.
A stronger enforcement of the abortion ban is likely to be more crushing for women from disadvantaged backgrounds, public health insiders say.
"Women who are economically better off will probably be able to go to China or Japan to get an abortion but those without money or a social network will suffer more," said Koh Kyung-sim, a retired obstetrician and a member the Physicians' Association for Humanism who testified in favor of overturning the abortion ban at the Constitutional Court in May. "If OB-GYN doctors refuse to perform the operation, many women will miss the ideal time period for a safe operation."
As the controversy deepened, Health Minister Park Neung-hoo announced last Tuesday that the regulation won't be enforced until the Constitutional Court's decision on the abortion ban.
However, OB-GYN doctors are maintaining their position to boycott abortions, demanding a more "fundamental solution."
"We are not asking for a temporary postponement of the regulation," the Korean College of Obstetrics and Gynecology said in a statement Thursday. "We cannot accept its decision to label women and doctors as immoral with an outdated abortion ban."
