Had been banned for 66 years, South Korea officially legalizes abortion on its country

News24xx.com - South Korea will legalize the practice of abortion in their country soon. The South Korean Constitutional Court has just lifted the abortion ban which has been valid for 66 years on Thursday, April 11th 2019. This regulation will officially take effect in 2020. This regulation is set after seven out of nine judges ruled that the ban on abortion is unconstitutional.

Parliamentarians or policy makers have time until December 31, 2020 to revise the law. The new regulation states that pregnancies that can be aborted are those less than 20 weeks old. Meanwhile, abortion after the fetus reaches 20 weeks is still illegal.

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Reporting from CNN, this legal determination arises because of pressure from the public, especially the pro-abortion group. In 2007, more than 235 thousand people signed a petition to legalize abortion. Based on the latest data released by the Korea Institute for Health and Social Affairs, three out of four women aged 15 to 44 consider the law of illegal abortion is unfair.

As many as 20 percent of people who signed the petition also claimed to have had done an abortion even though it is illegal. According to the South Korean Ministry of Health, there are 50 thousand women had an abortion last year. This number is down from 168 thousand in 2011. However, the actual number to reach 10 times of the number recorded.

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