Daring scheme for raising Korean births

Unless Koreans have more kids, their nation could disappear. A dynamic gynaecologist has a plan to reverse the trend by applying the existing laws on abortion.

Korea has the second-lowest birth rate in the world – so low that the government has reversed years of pressure on couples to have just one or two children. It now desperately wants to raise the birth rate. But why not reduce the abortion rate, asks obstetrician and gynaecologist Anna Choi. Her lobby group, Gynob, has created quite a stir with its demand that abortion be criminalised and abortion doctors prosecuted. We interviewed Dr Choi via email.

MercatorNet : The Korean government is very worried about the fact that the national birth rate is almost the lowest in the world. What is it doing to reverse this trend?

Anna Choi : The Korean government drove a population control policy from 1973 to recent years . Therefore, the present fertile generation grew up in social circumstances where family planning was encouraged. The problem of the low birth rate attracted serious attention in recent years and so the government has changed its policy and is encouraging a higher birth rate. However, a mere change in government policy cannot affect Koreans’ negative views on child-bearing within a short span of time. In other words, many people here still consider that raising many children can only increase their financial costs and requires too much sacrifice on the part of parents.

MercatorNet : How successful has your own group been in lobbying the government and changing public opinion?

Anna Choi: Having been accustomed to family planning policies for so long, the Korean government does not seem to appreciate the logic and implications of our movement. The government says it will take a long time to build up a social consensus for a new policy change. Such an easygoing attitude will not decrease abortion and is irresponsible in view of the status of abortion in Korea.

The government should adopt a new policy to control abortion on a large scale and to provide government assistance toward changing people’s awareness about a birth-friendly environment. We are determined to push forward toward establishing new population policies.

MercatorNet : How long did you do abortions? Why did you stop? How do you feel about the time you did abortions?

Anna Choi : I did abortions for 6 years after I opened my own clinic. In Korea about 80 percent of ob/gyn clinics do abortions. At that time I thought, “Nothing would change even if I don’t do any, as long as everyone else is doing them.” I was forced to do abortions to keep the clinic open.

In the beginning, I advised abortion-requesting women to give birth and tried to convince them not to abort. However, as time passed by, my efforts became perfunctory and I got disappointed with myself for doing abortions without much reflection and I lost confidence in myself as physician.

I stopped doing abortions, because I felt terrible about aborting healthy unborn babies to make a profit , while at the same time I was also trying to help infertile people get pregnant. 

MercatorNet : You have said that many Korean obstetricians are reluctant to stop doing abortions for financial reasons? Is it really that profitable?

Anna Choi : In Korea many ob/gyn clinics would be forced to close without doing abortions, due to a compulsory and abysmally low medical fee system. This is especially true for small-sized clinics.

MercatorNet : If doctors are compensated adequately for their other work so that they don’t have to do abortions to break even, do you think that the number of abortions will decline?

Anna Choi : If doctors who do not do abortions are better off than those who do abortions, it will help decrease the number of abortions. However, more importantly, we must decrease demand from women who want to have abortions and the government must adopt new policies toward increasing the population growth rate as soon as possible.

MercatorNet : More than 600 of your colleagues have joined your association and vowed not to do abortions. Why? Is it because of their religious convictions? Does that give you hope of changing the attitude of the medical profession?

Anna Choi : No doctors choose to work in obstetrics and gynaecology to do abortions. We hope our society will become a place where people deliver babies instead of aborting them. We also hope we will be able to run clinics without doing abortions. Religious beliefs have nothing to do with our movement. We just insist we need to fulfil our duties as medical doctors.

MercatorNet : Abortion is seen differently in Korea than in Western countries. Here most of its supporters regard it as an issue of women’s rights. But in Korea, where it is still technically illegal, I have the impression that abortion is more a matter of convenience and lifestyle. What differences do you see?

Anna Choi: The abortion problem in Korea is very different from that in other countries.

First of all, abortion is a crime under the Crimes Act. In 1973, however, the Mother and Child Health Act was enacted to support the government’s population control policy. This encouraged abortions as a method of contraception. Most people in Korea are unaware that abortion is illegal because the government is unwilling to enforce the criminal law.

Second, abortion has become prevalent in Korea not to protect women’s rights but to suppress them. All the responsibilities concerning contraception, birth and childrearing fall on women. The message that Korean society sends women is that they should get an abortion if they cannot deal with those responsibilities. Married women with economic difficulties and women pregnant with deformed babies, as well as single mothers, are, socially and psychologically, forced to get abortions. Therefore, pregnant women’s motherhood and health are seriously threatened.

Third, I have heard that there are few ob/gyn doctors who abortions overseas, even in countries where abortion is legal, and they are stigmatised for not respecting the life of the unborn child. The contrary is true in Korea. Korean ob/gyn doctors do abortions even though they know that abortion is illegal. After announcing that members of our group will do no more abortions, we have been harshly criticized by the public and ob/gyn-related organizations for putting women who want abortions in trouble.

MercatorNet : Estimates of the number of abortions in Korea range from about 350,000 to 1.2 million each year, giving it a reputation as a haven for abortions. In your experience, what percentage of women have ever had an abortion?

Anna Choi: Government statistics in 2005 says 29.8 out of 1,000 fertile women get abortions, which is much higher than countries which have no laws against abortion or where abortion is permitted.

From my own experience, I can only guess many more than this figure get abortions, but no statistics are available.

MercatorNet : Will your campaign succeed? How long will it take?

Anna Choi : We consider that it has been a success in view of the fact that ob/gyn doctors have publicly raised the issue and discussion over abortion is openly going on for the first time in Korea, where nobody has ever talked about the abortion issue. We have filed criminal accusations with the Prosecutors Office to launch investigations into three abortion hospitals.

After our nation-wide campaign began, many specialist abortion clinics have taken down their internet advertisements. More people are using contraception since getting an abortion is not as easy as it was before. Even the Ministry of Health, Welfare and Family Affairs recently announced that it would file criminal charges against doctors who are found to have committed abortion.

However, the government as well as ob/gyn associations are reluctant to reverse their policies and practices. On the contrary, some contend that abortion should be legalized and made free. If that happens, abortion-practicing hospitals will enjoy increasing revenues while hospitals which shun abortions will suffer. Accordingly, some enthusiastic participants in the anti-abortion movement are beginning to fade away.

The key issue here is the attitude of the Korean government. Unless the Ministry of Health returns to the principles enunciated in the Criminal Act and supports the pro-life movement, the anti-abortion movement is bound to fail.

But the Korean government should remember a few simple facts:

* Our birth rate has continuously fallen down and will hit negative growth by 2014.

* Because of the prevailing male preference tradition in Korea, the abortion rate is much higher for girls. Accordingly, importing women from neighboring Asian countries for marriage has been necessary. This trend started in the late 1990s and the total number of imported wives will reach about 250,000 by the end of 2010.

* Unless abortions stop, Korean society will be disoriented in every aspect of life. For example, the number of mixed-race Koreans will exceed one million in just a few years. This will be a huge change in our society, one for which we may not be prepared.

Translated by James Kim.

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