Abortion in Japan is allowed under a term limit of 22 weeks for endangerment to the health of the pregnant woman, economic hardship, or rape. Chapter XXIX of the

Penal Code of Japan The Penal Code (刑法 ''Keihō'') of Japan was passed in 1907 as Law No. 45. It is one of six Codes that form the foundation of modern Japanese law. The penal code is also called “ordinary criminal law” or “general criminal law” as it ...

makes

abortion Abortion is the termination of a pregnancy by removal or expulsion of an embryo or fetus. An abortion that occurs without intervention is known as a miscarriage or "spontaneous abortion"; these occur in approximately 30% to 40% of pregn ...

de jure In law and government, ''de jure'' ( ; , "by law") describes practices that are legally recognized, regardless of whether the practice exists in reality. In contrast, ("in fact") describes situations that exist in reality, even if not legally ...

illegal in the country, but exceptions to the law are broad enough that it is widely accepted and practiced. Exceptions to the prohibition of abortion are regulated by the Maternal Health Protection Law that allows approved doctors to practice abortion on a woman if the pregnancy was the result of rape or if the continuation of the pregnancy endangers the maternal health because of physical or economic reasons. Anyone trying to practice abortion without the consent of the woman will be prosecuted, including the doctors. If a woman is married, consent from her spouse is also needed to approve abortions for socioeconomic reasons, although the rule doesn't apply if she is in a broken marriage, suffering abuse or other domestic issues. Despite the partner’s consent not being necessary for unmarried women and women who were impregnated by abusive partners or through rape, many doctors and medical institutions seek a signature from the man believed to have made the woman pregnant for fear of getting into legal trouble, rights advocates say. No

abortifacient An abortifacient ("that which will cause a miscarriage" from Latin: ''abortus'' "miscarriage" and '' faciens'' "making") is a substance that induces abortion. This is a nonspecific term which may refer to any number of substances or medications, ...

has been approved in Japan. Approved doctors, however, can choose to use imported abortifacient under the same Maternal Health Protection Law. Any other person who aborts a fetus using abortifacients will be punished.

History

In 1842, the Shogunate in

Japan Japan ( ja, 日本, or , and formally , ''Nihonkoku'') is an island country in East Asia. It is situated in the northwest Pacific Ocean, and is bordered on the west by the Sea of Japan, while extending from the Sea of Okhotsk in the north ...

banned induced

in Edo, but the law did not affect the rest of the country until 1869, when abortion was banned nationwide.Norgren, Tiana. ''Abortion before Birth Control: The Politics of Reproduction in Postwar Japan'' Princeton, NJ: Princeton University Press, 2001.Obayashi, M. (1982). Historical background of the acceptance of induced abortion. Josanpu Zasshi 36(12), 1011-6. Retrieved April 12, 2006. However, the crime was rarely punished unless the conception was a result of adultery or the woman died as a result of the abortion procedure. According to the scholar Tiana Norgern, the abortion policy under the

Meiji government The was the government that was formed by politicians of the Satsuma Domain and Chōshū Domain in the 1860s. The Meiji government was the early government of the Empire of Japan. Politicians of the Meiji government were known as the Meiji o ...

was similar to that of the

Edo period The or is the period between 1603 and 1867 in the history of Japan, when Japan was under the rule of the Tokugawa shogunate and the country's 300 regional '' daimyo''. Emerging from the chaos of the Sengoku period, the Edo period was characteriz ...

, and was fueled by the belief that a large population would yield more military and political influence on the international stage. In 1868, the emperor banned midwives from performing abortions, and in 1880, Japan's first penal code declared abortion a crime. The punishments for abortion grew more severe in 1907 when the penal code revised: women could be incarcerated for up to a year for having an abortion; practitioners could be jailed for up to seven. The Criminal Abortion Law of 1907 is still technically in effect today, but other legislation has overridden its effects. In 1923, doctors were granted legal permission to perform emergency abortions to save the mother's life; abortions performed under different, less life-threatening circumstances were still prosecuted. In 1931, the Alliance for Reform of the Anti-Abortion Law (''Datai Hō Kaisei Kiseikai'') was formed by

Abe Isoo was a Japanese Christian socialist, parliamentarian and pacifist. He largely contributed to development of baseball in Japan, and was called "Father of Japanese baseball." He created a baseball club of Waseda University. Early life and educ ...

and argued that "it is a woman's right not to bear a child she does not want, and abortion is an exercise of this right". This organization believed that abortion should be made legal in circumstances in which there was a high chance of genetic disorder; in which a woman was poor, on public assistance, or divorced; in which it endangered the woman's health; and in which the pregnancy was a result of rape. In 1934, the Fifth All-Japan Women's Suffrage Congress wrote up resolutions calling for the legalization of abortion as well as contraception. This did not result in any immediate reaction from the government at the time, but after the war, these resolutions were consulted when drafting legislation legalizing abortion. In 1940, the National Eugenic Law stopped short of explicitly calling abortion legal by outlining a set of procedures a doctor had to follow in order to perform an abortion; these procedures included getting second opinions and submitting reports, though these could be ignored when it was an emergency. This was a daunting and complicated process that many physicians did not want to deal with, and some sources attribute the fall in abortion rate between 1941 and 1944 from 18,000 to 1,800 to this legislation. After World War II, Japan found itself in a population crisis. In 1946, 10 million people were declared at risk of starvation, and between the years 1945 and 1950, the population increased by 11 million. In 1948, in the wake of the

Miyuki Ishikawa was a Japanese midwife, real estate agent and serial killer. During the US occupation of Japan, she and several accomplices are believed to have murdered dozens of infants, a crime spree known as the Kotobuki San'in incident. Early life Miyuk ...

case, Japan legalized abortion under special circumstances. The Eugenic Protection Law of 1948 made Japan one of the first countries to legalize induced abortion. In 1949, a revision passed which provided abortion in the case of extreme physical or economic distress to the mother. A further stipulation was added in 1952 requiring that the mother meet an economic threshold of poor living conditions to obtain an abortion. The whole law was revised as the Maternal Health Protection Law in 1996.

Statistics

Overall, in 2019, the total number of abortions officially reported was 156,430, representing a 56 percent decrease from the number reported for 2000. The overall abortion rate changed from 22.3 to 15.3 abortions per 1,000 women aged 15-39 years. Going further back, there were 598,084 abortions in 1980 and 1,063,256 in 1960. In 2019, 49 abortions were reported for women aged 13 and under, and a further 3,904 for women aged 14–17. Some 39,805 abortions were performed on women aged 20-24. In 2020, according to the

health ministry A health department or health ministry is a part of government which focuses on issues related to the general health of the citizenry. Subnational entity, Subnational entities, such as State (administrative division), states, county, counties an ...

, there were 145,340 abortions, down 7.3% from the previous year. According to researchers, in more than 99 percent of cases, the reason reported for performing an abortion was to protect the woman's health; this percentage remained constant during 1975–1995.Goto, A., Fujiyama-Koriyama, C., Fukao, A., & Reich, M. "Abortion Trends in Japan, 1975–95". ''Studies in Family Planning'', Vol. 31, No. 4 (December 2000), pp. 301–308. Population Council. The same researchers also suggest that while official figures may be lower than the true rate of abortion due to under-reporting by doctors in order to lower tax bills and protect patient identities, trends may be "reasonably accurate".

Contraceptive use

A scenario study was conducted to assess the extent to which the

unintended pregnancy Unintended pregnancies are pregnancies that are mistimed, unplanned or unwanted at the time of conception. Sexual activity without the use of effective contraception through choice or coercion is the predominant cause of unintended pregnancy. Wor ...

rate in Japan, for the period when

oral contraceptive Oral contraceptives, abbreviated OCPs, also known as birth control pills, are medications taken by mouth for the purpose of birth control. Female Two types of female oral contraceptive pill, taken once per day, are widely available: * The combin ...

s (OC) had not yet been legalized for family planning purposes and couples relied mainly on

condom A condom is a sheath-shaped barrier device used during sexual intercourse to reduce the probability of pregnancy or a sexually transmitted infection (STI). There are both male and female condoms. With proper use—and use at every act of in ...

s, might change if more women were to use OC. Data provided by the 1994 Japanese National Survey on Family Planning were used to construct scenarios for national contraceptive use. Annual failure rates of contraceptive methods and nonuse were applied to the contraceptive use scenarios, to obtain estimates of the annual number of contraceptive failure-related pregnancies. Subsequently, contraceptive practice situations assuming higher OC use rates were defined, and the associated change in the number of contraceptive failure-related pregnancies was estimated for each situation. It emerged that OC use rates of 15% decreased the expected number of unintended pregnancies by 13–17%, whereas use rates of 25% resulted in decreases of 22–29% and use rates of 50% in decreases of 45–58%. The findings were reasonably robust to variation in the assumptions that were made. In conclusion, each theoretical percentage increase in the OC use rate in Japan was found to lead to a roughly equivalent percentage decrease in the number of unintended pregnancies.

Oral contraceptives Oral contraceptives, abbreviated OCPs, also known as birth control pills, are medications taken by mouth for the purpose of birth control. Female Two types of female oral contraceptive pill, taken once per day, are widely available: * The combin ...

were legalized in 1999.

Emergency contraceptive pills Emergency contraception (EC) is a birth control measure, used after sexual intercourse to prevent pregnancy. There are different forms of EC. Emergency contraceptive pills (ECPs), sometimes simply referred to as emergency contraceptives (ECs), o ...

were approved by the Ministry of Health, Labour and Welfare of Japan in 2011.“Sosei Receives Approval From Japan MHLW for NorLevo(R) TABLETS 0.75mg Emergency Contraceptive Pill”, Sosei Group Corporation press release, 23 February 2011
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References

{{DEFAULTSORT:Abortion In Japan Health law in Japan

Women's rights in Japan Birth control in Japan Healthcare in Japan

History

Statistics

Contraceptive use

See also

References