WHEN So-yeong, a pupil in secondary school, found out she was pregnant in January, she was at a loss. She knew abortion was illegal, and that she could be sent to jail for a year for getting one (doctors providing them risk two years behind bars). But she also knew that she could not keep the baby if she wanted to continue her education. Eventually she told her parents. Her mother arranged for a surreptitious abortion at a hospital, paying in cash. So-yeong (she asked that her real name not be used) tried to return to school in March “with a heavy heart”, only to find out that she was being expelled for “setting a bad example” to her peers.

In September a petition appeared on a government website, calling on the government of Moon Jae-in, the president (and the first liberal to hold the office in ten years), to amend the law. In particular, it called for the government to approve the sale of mifepristone, an abortion pill that is available in many countries. “Dear Mr President,” the petition started, “Unwanted pregnancy is a tragedy for all, including the woman, the unborn child and the country.” The government has promised to respond to any petition that gains more than 200,000 signatures in a month; this one received more than 235,000. “We were stunned by people’s fervour,” says Hong Yae-ji of Womenlink, an NGO.

Abortion has been illegal in South Korea since 1953, except in cases of rape, danger to a woman’s life or severe defects in the fetus. But for a long time governments turned a blind eye to it, viewing it as simply another form of birth control. Doctors readily provided it. Many people did not even know that it was illegal to have one. To this day the government estimates that around 170,000 pregnancies are aborted every year.

But in 2010 a group called Pro-Life Doctors started reporting hospitals offering abortions to the police. Wealthy and politically influential religious groups began campaigning against the practice too. The president at the time, Lee Myung-bak, a devout Christian, vowed to prevent illegal abortions. He created a task force to ensure the law was enforced, presenting the move as a way to lift falling fertility rates. It did not work: in 2016 there were only 406,000 live births, the lowest number on record. It did lift prices though: during Mr Lee’s term, the cost of a furtive abortion reportedly rose tenfold.

Advocates of abortion, many of them young women, are mounting a counter-attack. A year ago 14 women’s-rights groups gathered in central Seoul to protest against the abortion law and the abortion policies of Park Geun-hye, the (conservative) president at the time. Just days earlier the Ministry of Health had withdrawn a bill increasing the penalties for doctors performing abortions, after a backlash from doctors and women’s groups.

A recent survey found that only 36% of people want to keep abortion as a criminal offence, down from 53% in 2010. The constitutional court is due to rule soon on a challenge to the abortion law, on the grounds that it is an unwarranted infringement of women’s personal liberty. In 2012 the court voted narrowly to uphold it, but several more liberal judges have joined since then.

Whatever decision the court takes, it will be controversial. Counter-petitions have flooded the presidential home-page, although none of them has received many signatures. A government spokesperson has already warned that it may be some time before the government responds to the original petition. Politicians have long been wary of the subject. Lee Jung-mi of the Justice Party is one of the few MPs to have spoken out in favour of scrapping the law. Conversations about abortion in the National Assembly “have not yet broken the surface”, she says. The success of the petition is “only the beginning”.