By Lee Chi-dong
Staff Reporter

SEOUL A woman waits impatiently for the obstetrician? diagnosis at a hospital. ?ongratulations! You?e pregnant. The woman is all smiles and phones her husband. He comes back home earlier than usual with his hands full of food for his beloved wife.

This scene portrays our typical view regarding a confirmed pregnancy, celebrating the preservation of our species and sacred fruit of love.

The other side of reality shows a three-month-old fetus being torn apart by cold medical instruments in the womb, wiping out a potential human being.

Reproduction and abortion are the two greatly contrasting faces of pregnancy.

As many as 1.5 million abortions were carried out throughout the nation in 1994, 4,500 a day, according to data from Gallup.

The figure is more than twice that of total annual births which number about 700,000. This means that one is aborted every 20 seconds.

Unofficial figures show that over 2 million fetuses are aborted in Korea annually.

The enormous number of pregnancy terminations is attributed to a variety of factors such as the failure of contraceptives, governmental policies to control population size and the deep-rooted preference for boys.

A more problematic factor is the steadily increasing number of abortions by single women, which accounts for roughly 30 percent of total abortions.

?hen an unmarried woman gets pregnant, she has no choice but to abort in consideration of the conservative Korean culture, said Park In-sun, professor at the social welfare department of Ewha Womans University.

? am strongly against abortion. But if I get pregnant before marriage, I will terminate the pregnancy. I don? want to carry a life-long yoke, said Lee Jong-ah, a freshman at Sookmyong Women? University.

Furthermore, the age of unmarried women who become pregnant is getting lower every year.

A poll conducted by the YMCA shows that as many as 17.9 percent of male high school students in Seoul have had sex and 15.1 percent of them made their partners pregnant.

Concentrating on teen pregnancy and possible countermeasures, a confab was held at the Conference Hall of Sejong Center for Performing Arts, central Seoul on Nov. 19.

Approximately 150 participants, including professors, counselors and college students, attended the 12th bi-annual seminar, hosted by the Korea Pro-life Action League, which has spearheaded the anti-abortion movement in Korea for the past six years.

There were heated debates on the Mother and Child Health Law, which prohibits induced abortion, at the seminar.

One clause of the law allows abortion under special circumstances, for example if one of the parents has a genetic, contagious disease or in cases of rape.

But more abortions in Korea are not being conducted for these reasons.

? growing number of young women are getting abortions these days, seemingly resulting from insufficient sex education for teenagers and the fading efforts to refrain themselves from having premarital sex, said Park Moon-il, a professor at Hanyang University? medical school.

He added that many housewives are prone to abort their unwanted babies without any feelings of guilt.

In fact, 59.3 percent of married women were found to have had at least one abortion, according to a survey.

Nevertheless, he didn? hesitate to admit that some doctors fan the growing number of illegal abortions, breaking the rules by informing the parents of the gender of the fetus and ?ommitting feticide in pursuit of money.

Although pro-life activists call for the abolition of the clause, pro-choicers insist that abortion be a woman? right, considering that a fetus is nothing more than a cluster of cells.

Abortion is a hot topic not only in Korea but worldwide.

Disputes over the abortion pill RU 486, approved by the U.S. Food and Drug Administration in September, raged in the middle of the American presidential election, with the Republicans strongly against while the Democrats support the new ?bortion in a pill.

The Korean situation is quite different than other countries.

?raditionally, women have assumed all responsibilities for having a baby. The social structure should be changed so that their partners share this responsibility, said Han Sang-soon, head of Aeranwon, a facility where unmarried mothers and their children are taken care of.

Undoubtedly, preventing unwanted pregnancies is of much importance, and failure to do so does not mean an end to the problem. The government needs to put more weight on measures such as counseling, expanding the number of child-care centers. In addition, Korean people need to change way of thinking on adoption, she added.