A provision of the Medical Service Act that banned the sexual identification of fetuses has been brought back to the Constitutional Court. It is the second time since it was ruled unconstitutional in 2008.
According to the medical community, the Constitutional Court is hearing a constitutional challenge to Article 20 Paragraph 2 of the Medical Service Act. The provision stipulates that a medical practitioner must not disclose the sex of a fetus before 32 weeks of pregnancy.
The ban was first introduced in 1987 to prevent selective births, aborting a fetus if it was a girl amid dominant male preference.
The ban on fetal sex determination was ruled unconstitutional in 2008. A gynecologist suspended from her license for informing parents of their child's gender filed a constitutional petition and was ruled unconstitutional. The plaintiff claimed that the law violated the professional freedom of doctors and the right of parents to know the sex of their children.
The law was amended accordingly. However, it only shortened the ban to 32 weeks and reduced the punishment for doctors from license revocation to suspension.
The medical community calls for eliminating the provision on the occasion of the ongoing petition, pointing out that abortions based on the sex of the child are now rare, and the criminality of abortion itself has been virtually abolished.
The Korean Association of Obstetricians & Gynecologists said Tuesday that it has submitted an opinion letter to the Constitution Court, stating that the law "has lost its legislative purpose due to changes in the times and has lost its meaning" and that it “should be considered unconstitutional and abolished.”
"As women's socioeconomic status has improved, artificial intervention in the sex of children, regardless of birth order, has been largely eliminated since the mid-2010s. Third and subsequent births, which used to be highly selective, have also reached the natural sex ratio since 2014," the association said.
According to a 2018 survey by the Korea Health and Social Research Institute, 97.7 percent of artificial abortions were performed before 16 weeks, when sex can be determined by ultrasound, the association said. It can be seen that artificial abortion due to fetal sex discrimination rarely occurs, it pointed out.
The association said the provision itself is contradictory, as it punishes only medical professionals, although they do so at parents' request.
"If you're not a medical professional, you're not breaking the law by confirming the sex of a fetus. There have been cases of people posting fetal ultrasound images online to get gender information," the organization said. “The legal provision is outdated due to changing times and must be repealed.