A group of South Korean lawmakers introduced legislation aimed at easing the country’s ban on doctors telling parents the gender of unborn babies, a National Assembly aide said yesterday.
The government established the ban in 1987 to try to prevent abortions of female fetuses in a country where many prefer sons due to a Confucian belief that males carry on family lines.
However, the Constitutional Court ruled against the ban last month, saying South Korea has grown out of preference for sons and the regulations restrict the basic rights of parents and doctors.
The ruling noted that the sex-ratio imbalance — once as high as 116 boys to 100 girls — had fallen, approaching the natural level of about 106 boys to 100 girls.
The court ordered the law be revised to reflect the ruling by the end of next year and said the current ban will stand until the revision.
On Wednesday, 14 lawmakers — headed by the ruling Grand National Party’s Lee Ju-young — submitted a revision of the Medical Law that would allow doctors to tell parents genders of their unborn babies over 28 weeks old, said Kim Kwang-sup, an aide to Lee.
The proposal, however, would still ban doctors’ revealing the sexes of fetuses under 28 weeks old to prevent sex-selection abortions, Kim said. Abortion is illegal in South Korea but is widely practiced.
Kim said it is medically difficult to abort fetuses older than 28 weeks, and there are health risks for mothers.
It was unclear when the National Assembly would vote on the proposal. The legislature’s ruling and opposition lawmakers are currently locked in disputes over how to share chairmanships of parliamentary committees.
If the parliament fails to enact legislation by the end of next year, the current ban would automatically be repealed, according to Kim Bok-ki, a spokesman for the Constitutional Court.
Archeologists in Peru on Thursday said they found the 5,000-year-old remains of a noblewoman at the sacred city of Caral, revealing the important role played by women in the oldest center of civilization in the Americas. “What has been discovered corresponds to a woman who apparently had elevated status, an elite woman,” archeologist David Palomino said. The mummy was found in Aspero, a sacred site within the city of Caral that was a garbage dump for more than 30 years until becoming an archeological site in the 1990s. Palomino said the carefully preserved remains, dating to 3,000BC, contained skin, part of the
TRUMP EFFECT: The win capped one of the most dramatic turnarounds in Canadian political history after the Conservatives had led the Liberals by more than 20 points Canadian Prime Minister Mark Carney yesterday pledged to win US President Donald Trump’s trade war after winning Canada’s election and leading his Liberal Party to another term in power. Following a campaign dominated by Trump’s tariffs and annexation threats, Carney promised to chart “a new path forward” in a world “fundamentally changed” by a US that is newly hostile to free trade. “We are over the shock of the American betrayal, but we should never forget the lessons,” said Carney, who led the central banks of Canada and the UK before entering politics earlier this year. “We will win this trade war and
‘BODIES EVERYWHERE’: The incident occurred at a Filipino festival celebrating an anti-colonial leader, with the driver described as a ‘lone suspect’ known to police Canadian police arrested a man on Saturday after a car plowed into a street party in the western Canadian city of Vancouver, killing a number of people. Authorities said the incident happened shortly after 8pm in Vancouver’s Sunset on Fraser neighborhood as members of the Filipino community gathered to celebrate Lapu Lapu Day. The festival, which commemorates a Filipino anti-colonial leader from the 16th century, falls this year on the weekend before Canada’s election. A 30-year-old local man was arrested at the scene, Vancouver police wrote on X. The driver was a “lone suspect” known to police, a police spokesperson told journalists at the
North Korean leader Kim Jong-un has unveiled a new naval destroyer, claiming it as a significant advancement toward his goal of expanding the operational range and preemptive strike capabilities of his nuclear-armed military, state media said yesterday. North Korea’s state-run Korean Central News Agency (KCNA) said Kim attended the launching ceremony for the 5,000-tonne warship on Friday at the western port of Nampo. Kim framed the arms buildup as a response to perceived threats from the US and its allies in Asia, who have been expanding joint military exercises amid rising tensions over the North’s nuclear program. He added that the acquisition
RSS