The Seoul Administrative Court has dismissed a lawsuit from Women on Web, an abortion business headed by Rebecca Gomperts that ships abortion pills internationally, regardless of a country's laws surrounding abortion.

The court decision upholds South Korea's ban on international mail order abortion.

Key Takeaways:

• In 2024, Women on Web sued to have a corrective order issued in October 2024 by the Korea Communications Standards Commission (KCSC) overturned.

• With the order in place, the abortion website could not be accessed in South Korea.

• The Seoul Administrative Court’s 4th Administrative Division dismissed the lawsuit, ruling that the Women on Web website violates the Pharmaceutical Affairs Act.

• The ruling upholds a ban on international mail order abortions in South Korea.

The Backstory:

Women on Web, founded by Rebecca Gomperts, sued in 2024 over the blocking of their website by the Korea Communications Standards Commission (KCSC). According to the KCSC, the website violated the Pharmaceutical Affairs Act because Women on Web was mailing abortion drugs into the country from pharmacists outside of South Korea.

Currently, neither mifepristone nor misoprostol are legal in South Korea.

Abortion was decriminalized there in 2019, but there is no legal framework in place, as legislators have repeatedly failed to create any regulations or standards. However, South Korea President Lee Jae Myung recently called for abortion pill distribution to be made available.

Women on Web's mission is explicitly to mail abortion pills anywhere, regardless of a country's laws regarding abortion. Its website claims abortion is “part of life and should be freely available to all,” and it has a tagline of “abortion pill access by mail."

The Details:

The lawsuit was dismissed this month by the Seoul Administrative Court, with judges ruling that the Women on Web website is, in fact, a violation of the Pharmaceutical Affairs Act.

Women on Web argued that mailing abortion pills into South Korea qualifies as an “act carried out under necessity,” which refers to a necessary action taken to avoid a present danger to one’s own or another person’s life, body, freedom or property. The abortion group claimed that therefore, their website is not illegal:

In the absence of alternative legislation following the Constitutional Court’s decision that the criminalization of abortion was unconstitutional, activities to assist women in safely terminating pregnancies are justifiable acts under the Criminal Act or unavoidable necessity.

The court, however, disagreed, saying the ban on the website is “hard to see as unlawful because Women on Web’s provision of abortion pills that were not manufactured, imported or approved for use in Korea violated the Pharmaceutical Affairs Act." Therefore, the website promoted “information intended for a crime," which is illegal.

Because Women on Web's main mission is the mailing of abortion pills, the block on the site would remain, with the court explaining, “It appears the site was primarily operated for the purpose of providing medications, not merely offering abortion information.”

Furthermore, the court said the lawsuit was improperly filed, as Women on Web used a power of attorney to file the suit, but failed to have the document notarized. “It was an improper lawsuit filed by someone without litigation agency rights," the court said.

The Bottom Line:

This is potentially only a temporary victory for life in South Korea, as the country moves towards making the intentional killing of preborn human beings fully legal and accessible.