Anti-Abortion Policy

Fundamental Remedy Needed to Reduce Fetal Homicide

Korea's birthrate is almost the lowest in the world, while its proportion of abortion by fertile women is nearly the highest. The government's policy package to prevent illegal artificial abortions announced Monday shows its agony to resolve the seemingly contrasting but actually common problems ― and how difficult the task would be.

The package calls for, among other things, toughening penalties for obstetricians performing illegal abortions and increasing subsidies for young single parents.

Unlike its title, however, the ``comprehensive" measures are at best ostensible and fragmentary steps, which cannot alter the underlying environment where intentional miscarriage of fetuses is still better than delivering and raising babies, especially for unwed mothers.

How many youngsters, for instance, would opt to become single parents lured by the monthly subsidy of 100,000 won until they become 24? At its worst, the administrative crackdown on abortion doctors will be costlier and more dangerous, forcing women with unwanted pregnancy to go abroad if they are rich, and to unlicensed practitioners if they are poor, risking greater health hazards.

All this indicates that the Ministry for Health, Welfare and Family Affairs, coming under the dual pressure from pro-life civic and medical groups and from the realistic need of raising birthrate, had to come up with something quickly rather than delving into the fundamental environment, which require approaches from ethical, religious and social aspects.

What the nation should tackle first in this regard is to rectify the glaring disparity between a too strict legal system and actual practices ― or between ideals and reality. The Mother and Child Health Law permits abortions in only five cases, including rape, incest, hereditary disorders and when the mother's health is in serious danger, resulting in the fact that less than 5 percent of about 350,000 abortions a year are legal. The annual abortion rate among fertile Korean women, on the other hand, is about 3 percent, higher than 2.1 percent in the U.S. and 1.8 percent in the U.K., countries that allow abortion more widely.

Ethical concerns on abortion aside, the nation needs to correct this hypocrisy by liberalizing the law because facing reality is often the first step toward solving the problem. This is also why we don't think the issue should proceed as a debate between pro-life and pro-choice groups as in some Western countries. The life and health of women must be held at least as important ― if not more than ― as those of fetuses.

Above all, the time has long passed for Koreans to change their millennia-old bias against single mothers with ``fatherless child," which, when coupled with their excessive adherence to blood ties, also brought about the ignoble title of ``baby exporter" on Korea even at a time when this country has become the world's 14th largest economy. Also required would be a change in the time-old patriarchal environment that discriminates against women, single or married, with or without children.

More realistically, any government policy to reduce abortions and raise the birthrate must start with a drastic increase in financial support for women with children, not just because it is helpful for economic growth but because it makes the Korean society more worthwhile to live in.