7 Years After Constitutional Court Ruling, South Korea Moves Toward Approving Abortion Pill

[Anchor]

As we have reported on multiple occasions, seven years have passed since the Constitutional Court ruled the punishment for abortion unconstitutional, yet abortion medication remains unapproved, leaving women to take dangerous risks. It has been learned that the government has recently moved in the direction of allowing the use of medication.

Reporter Park Ha-jeong has the details.

[Reporter]

Women obtain and take pills from social media without even knowing the exact ingredients.

[Seller: Another high school student bought them, and after about two or three weeks, it all worked.]

Some even receive chemotherapy injections used for leukemia treatment, which carry risks of side effects.

[Nurse: What you can do with an injection is that the gestational sac must not be visible.]

This is the reality that women in South Korea are enduring in 2026 to terminate pregnancies.

This is because, even seven years after the Constitutional Court ruled that punishing abortion is incompatible with the Constitution, alternative legislation making medical abortion accessible has not been enacted.

Citing this reason, the Ministry of Food and Drug Safety has also refrained from approving abortion medications like Mifegyne, which are sold legally overseas.

[President Lee Jae-myung (Cabinet Meeting (last July)): By leaving it outside the law, the government may evade responsibility, but the public is put in danger.]

Subsequently, the Ministry of Government Legislation issued an interpretation last month stating that abortion medication can be approved even before a law is revised, and it has been confirmed that the government has set a policy to permit the use of abortion pills exclusively for early pregnancies of up to 9 weeks.

In the case of Mifegyne, clinical trial results have been reported showing an abortion success rate of 94.9% to 97.3% within 9 weeks of pregnancy.

Regarding pharmacists, considering that the punishment for abortion has not been abolished, a method where hospitals handle both prescription and dispensing internally for a period of two years is being reviewed.

[Lee Jae-kwan / Chairman of the Korean Society of Obstetrics and Gynecology: In-house prescriptions seem necessary for safe management. The point of whether it should be 9 weeks or 10 weeks is finding the optimal intersection between how to safely administer the treatment and patient accessibility.]

Opposition from religious and other circles remains a variable, while the medical community maintains the stance that safety measures must be strengthened, such as restricting prescriptions to obstetricians and gynecologists.

(Video Editing: Jeon Min-gyu, Design: Lee Ga-jin)
※ Please note: This article was translated by AI and may contain errors.