A 24-year-old YouTuber in Seoul, South Korea, has been arrested after posting a video claiming she underwent an abortion at 36 weeks gestation. The woman, who has not been named in local news reports, claimed she did not know she was pregnant until late into the pregnancy. The hospital allegedly responsible for committing the abortion is under investigation as well.
After seeing the video, which was posted in June, the health ministry filed a complaint against the woman, as well as the doctor who committed the abortion. “The YouTuber and the doctors of the hospital where she underwent the surgery are being investigated as criminal suspects,” a Seoul Metropolitan Police Agency official told reporters this week.
The footage of the video went viral, and though it has since been deleted, screenshots are still circulating. Using a search and seizure warrant to Google, the headquarters of YouTube, police tried to find out who the woman was and where the abortion was committed.
Google refused to hand over that information, so police used independent analysis to verify the video’s contents.
“We are in the process of analyzing the seized evidence, but we found no signs that the YouTube video was fabricated,” the official told reporters during a press conference. “We still have to confirm through medical evaluation what week the fetus was at the time, and whether its death was due to abortion, murder or stillbirth.”
During police questioning, the woman admitted to the abortion.
Preborn children were previously protected from abortion in South Korea until 2019 when a constitutional ruling struck down the pro-life law. The statute, originally enacted in 1953, was said to violate the constitution, and the National Assembly was ordered to put new legislation protecting abortion into place by 2020. They failed to do so, however, leaving the legal status of abortion unclear.
While there are technically no limits on late-term abortion in South Korea, the Ministry of Health and Welfare is requesting this case to be treated like a murder.
Though 36 weeks gestation is technically still premature — specifically referred to as “late pre-term” — most babies born at this age are able to survive and be perfectly healthy. By 36 weeks, the baby’s lungs are fully developed, her digestive system is fully formed, and she is ready to breathe outside the womb and digest breast milk or formula after birth. This baby was more than capable of being born safely and placed for adoption.
Instead, this child, old enough to survive outside the womb with little to no intervention, was deliberately killed.
Abortion advocates frequently note that late abortions are very uncommon, and are only carried out to save the life of the mother or when a child is facing a medical diagnosis. But these overused claims about late abortion are false. (Induced abortion — the direct and intentional killing of a preborn child — is not medically necessary.)
Research shows that late abortions are most often carried out for the same reasons as early abortions.
“The reasons people need third-trimester abortions are not so different from why people need abortions before the third trimester…” reads a study from the pro-abortion group Advancing New Standards in Reproductive Health (ANSIRH). “[T]he circumstances that lead to someone needing a third-trimester abortion have overlaps with the pathways to abortion at other gestations.”
While the study doesn’t detail the reasons women give for late abortions, it does note that women have abortions in the third trimester for multiple reasons, including difficulty arranging an abortion, a health diagnosis for the baby, and — as in this South Korean case — not knowing about the pregnancy until very late.
