A prominent South Korean bioethicist delivered a detailed and data-rich warning at an April 11 colloquium in Seoul, arguing that abortion — particularly medication abortion — has been deliberately transformed from a medical and ethical issue into a profit-driven industrial system, with pharmaceutical companies, distributors, and policy lobbying groups all benefiting financially at women’s expense.
Dr. Jang Ji-young, secretary general of the Seongsan Institute for Bioethics and a physician at Ewha Womans University Seoul Hospital, presented her findings to the institute’s April colloquium at Yongsan Station. She argued that large abortion providers are expanding through chain business models to achieve economies of scale, while pharmaceutical companies maximize profits through telemedicine and mail-order systems that minimize labor costs and bypass geographic limitations.
The numbers are stark. The global medication abortion market was valued at $4.4 billion in 2024 and is projected to reach $8 billion by 2035. Manufacturing costs for abortion drugs run between $1 and $4 per dose; patients are charged upward of $500. Dr. Jang argued that companies benefit from the massive margin while bearing none of the medical responsibility — complications such as incomplete abortion and hemorrhage fall entirely on individual women, while public health systems absorb the broader social costs.
She also challenged the safety data underpinning medication abortion’s public reputation, noting that U.S. complication rates based on voluntary reporting are cited as under 0.5%, but insurance claims data suggests rates as high as 10.9%. In the United Kingdom, freedom of information requests revealed more than 11,000 complication cases against official figures of only a few hundred.
Turning to South Korea, Dr. Jang warned that the country’s ongoing legislative vacuum — following a 2019 Constitutional Court ruling that struck down the existing abortion law — has allowed an unregulated commercial market to develop, with clinics openly advertising procedures and pricing. She called on lawmakers to establish firm legislation protecting life, preventing medical commercialization, and safeguarding professional ethics.
The abortion industry does not want this conversation to happen. When a South Korean physician stands before a bioethics forum and lays out a margin structure that would embarrass any pharmaceutical company — $1 to make, $500 to sell, zero liability for complications — the “women’s rights” framing starts to look exactly like what Dr. Jang says it is: a marketing strategy. The data on underreported complications deserves far wider attention than it is receiving. Women deserve accurate information, not a profit model dressed up as healthcare.