Is abortion legal in South Korea?
Abortion in South Korea was decriminalized on January 1, 2021, following a 2019 ruling by the Constitutional Court of Korea. As a result, abortion is now legal throughout pregnancy, as no new laws have been enacted to impose restrictions or gestational limits. Prior to this, abortion was criminalized under the 1953 Criminal Code, with exceptions introduced in 1973 through the Maternal and Child Health Law. These exceptions allowed for abortions in cases of hereditary or communicable diseases, rape, incest, or if the pregnancy endangered the woman’s health. Physicians who violated the law faced imprisonment, and women who sought self-induced abortions could be fined or jailed.
Although the abortion law was not strictly enforced, especially during the 1970s and 1980s when the government sought to reduce the fertility rate, attention shifted to illegal abortions as the fertility rate dropped in the 2000s. The government subsequently increased enforcement of abortion laws. Sex-selective abortion, driven by a cultural preference for sons, was prevalent until the early 1990s but has since nearly disappeared, despite a 1987 revision of the Medical Code prohibiting sex determination through prenatal testing. The Constitutional Court declared this 1987 law unconstitutional in 2008, and the gender ratio at birth has since balanced out.
