This is pretty old news, given that
the report is from St. Patrick's Day, but I just found it today from
Jonathan Turley's blog.
SEOUL, South Korea - Having a third child wasn't in Mrs. Kim's plans. She and her husband are already struggling to get by.
But getting an abortion, once so routine here that South Korea was known as "Abortion Republic," is no longer easy. In recent weeks, the government has begun enforcing a long-ignored ban on the procedure for the first time.
It took Mrs. Kim 10 tries to find a doctor willing to perform an abortion, and he's demanding nearly $1,000 in cash. To scrape together the money, the six-weeks pregnant woman took a second job cleaning an office building overnight for a few weeks.
--snip--
South Korea outlawed abortion in 1953 with exceptions for rape, incest or severe genetic disorders. Yet authorities turned a blind eye for decades, as the nation sought to tame population growth. For $300, women could get an abortion at almost any OB-GYN clinic.
Hmm, that seems to be the position of most of the pro-life crowd in the US: abortion is OK only in the most dire circumstances (but teen pregnancy doesn't count as one?)
But it seems that South Korea is making a big fuss about abortion...because of population issues!
That changed earlier this year, a shift that pro-choice activists say was motivated by the country's plunging birthrate. The Ministry of Health and Welfare even announced it would set up a hot line for citizens to report on lawbreaking doctors or pregnant women.
--snip--
The procedure was seen for years as a way to help curb high fertility rates, sociologist Cho Byong-hee said.
"The government aggressively propagated the notion that having fewer kids would lead to prosperity, without any public debates or discussions over the ethics of abortion," said Cho, a professor at Seoul National University.
Maybe Tim Tebow should become a preacher in South Korea sometime soon. (Back in February, Tim Tebow appeared in a brief TV commercial during the Super Bowl. The ad featured his mother Pam discussing her choice to continue with the pregnancy with Tim despite doctor's recommendation otherwise. Fallaciously it asserts that just because Pam chose to carry Tim to term that Tim Tebow is now a football star, other stages in life like parental support/hard work be damned.)
And of course, it appears that Asian culture mirrors American culture in championing abstinence until marriage.
Birth control is still a taboo in South Korea, a society shaped by a Confucian heritage that prizes chastity. Lack of education on birth control means too many unplanned pregnancies, said women's rights activist Kim Doo-na.
The stigma of being a single mother in a society that treats them as outcasts pushes many to abortion when they do fall pregnant, she said.
An estimated 350,000 abortions were carried out in South Korea in 2005, or about 30 in every 1,000 women between ages 15 to 44, in the latest available figures. In comparison, there were about 20 abortions per 1,000 women in the U.S. that year.
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