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  • 2018-09-05 (xsd:date)
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  • Did 125 Women Terminate Their Pregnancies During a Protest in South Korea? (en)
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  • In late August 2018, a number of pro-life web sites such as LifeNews.com published articles reporting that 125 women took abortion pills to kill their babies during a protest concerning the legality of abortion in South Korea: The accompanying photograph did depict a protest in South Korea, but the claim that 125 women took abortion pills during that demonstration in order to terminate their pregnancies as part of the demonstration does not appear to be accurate. The majority of participants in the protest were intended to simply take harmless vitamin pills. Activists in South Korea put out a call in August 2018 for 125 women to join them for a protest at Boshingak (a large pavilion at the center of Seoul) to demand the end of Clause 269, a portion of the South Korean legal code that criminalizes abortion, and to legalize the abortion drug Mifepristone. The protest, which was organized by the Korean feminist organizations Femidangdang and Baumealame in collaboration with Women on Waves, featured 125 women because that's the number of women, according to the activists, who have abortions in South Korea every hour: The invitation for the event informed participants that while one activist would truly be taking the abortion drug Mifepristone, all 125 volunteers would be given harmless vitamins to take instead: A message posted to Twitter announcing the event also stated that all of the pills handed out by the event organizers would be vitamins, not actual abortion pills: We went through the sign-up process to find out more about the demonstration and noted that the sponsoring organization had stated on numerous occasions that the pills handed out to the 125 women participants would be nothing more than vitamins. In the event's FAQ section, for instance, the activists wrote that all the pills distributed by the organizer to the participants are vitamin D. This event reportedly did feature at least one activist taking the drug Mifepristone. However, it's unclear if she or any other activists who might have actually taken the drug were pregnant at the time of the protest. A portion of the FAQ section explained that while the protest trod the line of legality, authorities would not be able to tell who had taken the drug or whether any of protest participants were pregnant: Another section explained that medical staff would be on hand to provide aid to the participants: We reached out to Women on Waves and Femidangdang for more information about the protest but did not receive a response prior to publication. (en)
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