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Posts Tagged ‘Korea’

Daring scheme for raising Korean births

March 10th, 2010 Comments off

Low birth rate a problem? Making abortion illegal seems like a good idea to me. I’m skeptical that Korea (or any abortion nation) would actually pull it off, though.

Anna Choi

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. Read more…

Terminating Korea’s abortion culture

December 18th, 2009 Comments off

Way to go, Dr. Sang-duk Shim and the doctors who have joined you to fight abortion in Korea. Way to be courageous despite opposition on many fronts.

From Mercatornet.com

A Korean gynaecologist explains why he abandoned a lucrative procedure and is campaigning to reduce abortions.

South Korea has one of the highest rates of abortion in the world, even though abortion is technically illegal there except in a few rare circumstances. According to official government figures, there are 340,000 abortions each year, although one parliamentarian has estimated that there may be as many as 1.5 million. At the same time, Korea’s birth rate is the second-lowest in the world – 1.19 births per woman — and some Koreans fear that their very survival as a nation is in doubt.

That is the background for a courageous decision by a 50-year-old Seoul obstetrician and gynaecologist, Dr Sang-duk Shim, to stop doing abortions and to lobby the government for a dramatic reduction. He has even received death threats for his stand. MercatorNet conducted this email interview with him: Read more…