Anchor: The Constitutional Court has ruled that an article of the nation’s medical law which prohibits medical professionals from revealing the gender of a fetus before week 32 of pregnancy violates the Constitution. Our Bae Joo-yon has more. 

Report: The Constitutional Court on Wednesday ruled six to three against Article 20, Section Two of the Medical Service Act which prohibits doctors from disclosing the gender of a fetus before week 32 of pregnancy. Violators can face up to two years in prison or a fine of up to 20 million won. 

The “before week 32 of pregnancy” stipulation was added in 2008 to the article which was first put into effect in 1987 to prevent the abortion of female fetuses when families tended to favor boys over girls.

With the court ruling, the article has been deemed unconstitutional after 37 years. 

In its ruling on Wednesday, the top court said it is difficult to recognize causation between the article and abortion as statistics show that modern Korean society no longer prefers boys over girls. 

The court added that the said article is clearly unreasonable and unfair as it cited that during the past decade, there have been no investigation or indictment regarding a violation of the article. 

In issuing the ruling, three of the top court’s justices assessed that the article is inconsistent with the Constitution, rather than that it’s unconstitutional, saying there is a need to give parliament the opportunity to revise the medical law to provide minimum level of protection to prevent abortions resulting from learning of a fetus’ gender.

Bae Joo-yon, KBS World Radio News.