On Thursday, Amnesty International warned that South Korea’s abortion framework did not go far enough to protect women’s reproductive health and rights. Amnesty International’s call for improved protections for women came in response to an appeal ruling by the Seoul High Court that acquitted a 26-year-old woman charged with murder, overturning an earlier conviction.
“While we welcome the court’s decision to acquit the woman who sought an abortion, the court’s decision to uphold the medical workers’ convictions exposes structural gaps in access to essential health care in South Korea,” HeeKyong Cho, executive director of Amnesty International Korea, said in a statement.
The Seoul High Court acquitted Kwon, the 26-year-old woman charged with murder. determining that she did not know that a doctor would kill the fetus after it emerged alive from her body, and that she only knew that the fetus would be delivered from her womb dead. The verdict at the overturned trial, which sentenced her to three years in prison and probation for five years, found that she had acted with willful negligence in the murder. According to the prosecutor The fetus was reportedly born alive through a cesarean section and was later placed in a freezer, causing it to die. The director of the hospital and the operating surgeon were charged with the delivery and subsequent killing of the fetus. Their sentences were reduced but not repealed. In June 2024, Kwon documented her experiences and hospital stay in a YouTube vlog, which then went viral.
“The National Assembly’s failure to amend the abortion law has left pregnant women without clear legal protections and access to basic reproductive health care,” Cho said in a statement. Cho also called on the government to remove barriers to access to safe abortion and amend the Maternal and Child Health Law to “prioritize women’s sexual and reproductive health and rights.”
In 2019, the South Korean Constitutional Court lifted a ban on abortionand ruled that the criminalization of abortion was unconstitutional because it violated women’s right to bodily autonomy. The court ordered lawmakers to revise the law by the end of 2020 The government still has to be passed Although there is replacement legislation determining when abortions are allowed, there are several bills pending in the National Assembly that aim to fill the legal vacuum left by the court’s 2019 ruling.
Amnesty International had also commented on the case when Kwon was initially convicted. In March, Sarah Brooks, Amnesty International’s deputy regional director, said the ruling highlighted “the impossible position pregnant people and medical providers face due to the ongoing legal vacuum surrounding abortion in South Korea.” Brooks had raised concerns that the lack of existing regulations may have limited access to health care and pushed pregnant people into exploitative and unregulated practices.
Abortion legislation also recently came into the public eye under President Lee Jae Myung called for restrictions to be relaxed about the abortion pill mifepristone. Without clear legislation, women seeking abortions often search for smuggled drugs in online forums or underground markets. In 2025, Myung’s government had included the legalization of abortion drugs in its five-year national policy agenda.
