• South Korean court convicts woman and two doctors in murder of newborn

A South Korean court has found a woman and two doctors guilty of murdering her newborn, after she sought to end her pregnancy at 36 weeks.

Prosecutors stated that the baby was born alive before being killed. The surgeon received a four-year prison sentence, the hospital director six years, and the mother was given a three-year suspended sentence.

This marks the first case in South Korea where murder charges were brought against a woman seeking a late-term abortion and the doctors involved.

Authorities said the newborn was placed in a freezer after birth until it died, and hospital staff falsified the mother’s medical records to make it appear as a stillbirth.

During the trial, both the hospital director and surgeon admitted to killing the child and were immediately taken into custody. Investigators revealed the hospital had received roughly 1.4 billion won for performing abortions on more than 500 patients, many referred via brokers.

The mother, identified as Kwon and in her twenties, claimed she did not know the child would be killed and only discovered her pregnancy after seven months. She cited financial instability and fear of birth defects due to smoking during pregnancy as reasons for seeking an abortion.

The judge considered South Korea’s legal vacuum on late-term abortions when sentencing, granting some leniency due to limited support for mothers in such situations.

In 2019, South Korea’s Constitutional Court struck down the long-standing abortion ban and set a deadline for parliament to regulate the procedure up to 22 weeks of pregnancy. However, new legislation has yet to be enacted, leaving the country without clear abortion regulations.