Dozens of South Korean women swallow the abortion pill in public to protest pro-life laws

By Jonathon Van Maren

Earlier this week, South Korea witnessed a stomach-churning protest: 125 women swallowed abortion pills in front of the Bosinga Pavilion in Seoul, with another thirty women joining them to take vitamins to ensure that authorities would not be able to tell which women were taking the abortifacients. Clad unironically in funeral black, the women—collaborating with the Korean feminist organizations Femidangdang and Baumealame as well as Women on Waves—demanded that the Korean government repeal South Korea’s 59-year-old abortion ban as well as make the abortion pill easily available. The women did not state whether or not they were pregnant before taking the drugs.

South Korean pro-lifers have been working hard to combat the abortion activists, responding to a petition of 230,000 signatures demanding the legalization of abortion with a counter-petition in February with well over a million names in support of the nation’s pro-life laws. Korea’s Constitutional Court is currently examining those laws, which still hold widespread support—over half of Koreans believe abortion constitutes murder of some kind, and over a thousand people marched through Seoul’s shopping district earlier this year chanting slogans such as “Abortion out!” While the government appears to have no intention of caving to these demands, South Korea is only the latest nation to deal with the issue of the abortion pill.

Many abortion activists see the abortion pill as the future of their movement, especially as American pro-life activists continue to achieve success in passing pro-life legislation and many nations stubbornly refuse to relax their restrictions. Despite the danger of the abortion pill, for example, a new policy is set to allow women in England allowed to take the abortifacient drugs at home. A law intending to limit access to the abortion pill in the state of Alabama was recently put on hold by a judge. And California, on the cutting edge as usual, is poised to require that the abortion pill be available on campuses for students who prefer to expel their unwanted children in the comfort of their own quarters.

While abortion activists push to make abortifacient pills widely and easily accessible as well as legal to take at home, the Food and Drug Administration (FDA) has come out with information that directly rebuts their claim that RU-486 is perfectly safe for women. So far, at least twenty-two women have died after taking the abortion pill, 1,041 women have been hospitalized, and 598 women required blood transfusions. These numbers may actually be low, as not all RU-486 abortions are actually reported, and so there may be no record. But the facts are clear: Women are inducing abortions with these drugs with no medical supervision, and severe pain, heavy bleeding, and other complications—including death—can be the result. It goes without saying that death is always the result for the baby being aborted.

Again we see that while abortion activists claim that their movement is about women, in reality it is about abortion—at all costs, and without apology. If that cost includes the mental and physical health of the women, then so be it. In order to be free, they claim, women must have the right to abort their offspring. This lie, it must be noted, pays rich dividends for the companies that make up Big Abortion, like Planned Parenthood, Marie Stopes, and others. The abortion pill may harm women—but it also kills babies, and that is why abortion activists will continue to support it regardless of what the FDA or any other oversight organization reveals about the impact on women’s health.

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For anyone interested, my book on The Culture War, which analyzes the journey our culture has taken from the way it was to the way it is and examines the Sexual Revolution, hook-up culture, the rise of the porn plague, abortion, commodity culture, euthanasia, and the gay rights movement, is available for sale here.