Unlike many countries of the world where women had to fight long
and fierce battles for their right to safe and legal abortions, the women of Japan
were given access to legal abortions as early as 1948, three years after Japan's
defeat in the World War II, through the enactment of the Eugenic Protection Law.
It was not a fruit of any feminist movement but "a gift from above"
as a part of the post-war national population policy. The Japanese government,
which had encouraged women to bear as many healthy children as possible to fulfill
"the national mission of motherhood" from the beginning of the Meiji
Restoration in 1868 up to the end of the war, was now facing a serious overpopulation
problem in the devastated land.
Although in principle induced abortions are banned in the Penal Code, the Eugenic
Protection Law declared that abortions could be obtained legitimately for eugenic
or health reasons, rape, or leprosy of the pregnant woman or her spouse. The law
was revised in the following year so as to sanction abortions for "economic"
reasons, which, in fact, meant opening the door to abortion on demand. Under the
new law, the number of induced abortions skyrocketed to a peak of 1,170,143 cases
in 1955, and the overall birthrate dropped in concordance with it from 34.3 per
thousand in 1947 to 28.1 in 1950 and 19.4 in 1955.
The abortion law of Japan had many controversial aspects, the most notorious being
its eugenically discriminatory character, but also it must be admitted that the
early legalization of abortion helped Japanese women to control their fertility
and thus facilitated rapid economic recovery and encouraged stabilization in people's
lives. After many years of protests from people with disabilities, the discriminatory
clauses of the Eugenic Protection Law were eliminated in 1996 and the name of
the law was changed into the Maternal Body Protection Law.
In contrast with prompt legalization of abortion directed from above, and its
ready acceptance at the popular level, diffusion of contraception occurred relatively
slowly. Although the practice of contraception has gradually become the primary
means of fertility control since the 1960s, and the number of abortions has declined
steadily, abortion is still regarded as a quick and easy way of terminating an
unwanted pregnancy. In Japan, it has not been teenage girls or unmarried women
but married women who have constituted the majority of the population selecting
abortion. Reports have indicated that from 30 to more than 50 percent of Japanese
wives have had induced abortions, many of them more than once.
Behind such high marital abortion rates lies the peculiarity of contraception
patterns among Japanese couples. In all of the research conducted from 1947 to
the present, condoms have overwhelmingly been the contraceptive method of first
choice. For example, in a Mainichi newspaper family planning survey conducted
in 1998, 77.8 percent of respondents replied that they used condoms. Condoms are
chosen because they are easiest to obtain and use, because "everybody else
uses them," and because many Japanese couples find it embarrassing or troublesome
to consult doctors or health care specialists about alternative contraceptive
methods. Accordingly, use of so-called "modern methods" such as IUDs,
diaphragms, and the pill is remarkably low in comparison with other countries.
The rates of both male and female sterilization are also quite low.
Although condoms are relatively effective and can prevent various sexually transmitted
diseases as long as they are used correctly, many Japanese men dislike them (as
do many men in other countries) and tend to neglect their use in spite of objections
from their partners. Since they are often economically dependent on their husbands,
many wives find it difficult to reject intercourse under such circumstances. Furthermore,
Japanese women are usually socialized not to be self-assertive toward men or to
act knowledgeable about sexual matters because to do so is considered "unwomanly."
Such a passive stance on the part of women can result in unwanted pregnancies
and induced abortions.
What is also peculiar about contraceptive patterns in Japan is the fact that the
use of oral contraceptives, the pill, was not officially approved for contraception
until nearly four decades after their appearance on the market. The initial reason
given for disapproval was a fear of side effects. Beginning in 1972, when the
Ministry of Health and Welfare designated the pill as a prescription drug for
treatment of menstrual disorders, the only way for a woman to use the pill for
contraception was to obtain the older type pills containing higher doses of synthetic
hormones under the pretext of such treatment at the office of an obstetrician-gynecologist.
Ironically, these drugs are more likely to cause side effects compared to the
low hormone-dosage pills currently in use in other countries. Although the exact
number of Japanese women on the pill is not known, it is estimated that about
200,000 women are now taking it for contraceptive purposes. They comprise only
one percent of the population using contraceptives.
Another reason for the delay in approving the pill for contraception, though not
openly discussed, was "a fear of sexual disorders," or, more precisely,
a fear of the sexual liberation of women by conservative members of society. In
the early 1990s, the fear of the AIDS epidemic was promoted as a reason to freeze
the then-scheduled approval of the pill; it was argued that the pill would cause
a decrease in condom use.
Interestingly, many of Japanese feminists and women's health activists have also
been unenthusiastic about the liberalization of the pill. Besides fear of side
effects, they claimed that the pill would be liberating more for men than for
women because it would place the entire responsibility for and burden of contraception
on the woman alone. A sense of "unnaturalness" of artificially controlling
the natural rhythm of a woman's body was given as another reason for disapproval.
Women's health activists in Osaka even published a book entitled The Pill: We
Don't Choose It in 1987. Thus, the pill has long been perceived more as a symbol
of medical and political control of women's bodies than as a symbol of women's
liberation and sexual autonomy.
After the 1994 Cairo Conference on Population and Development, however, a change
in attitudes toward the pill occurred. Some doctors began to claim that the unavailability
of low-dose pills in Japan impinged upon women's reproductive rights both by forcing
women to take the less safe high-dose pills and, in the case of women who don't
use the pill, by increasing the possibility of their resorting to abortions as
a result of contraceptive failure. Even though many Japanese feminist activists
still did not regard the pill as the best contraceptive method, they agreed on
the point that the women's right to choose must be in the hands of individual
women.
After several years more of discussions and advances and retreats in pharmaceutical
politics, the pill was finally approved in June, 1999, and appeared on the market
at the end of August. Will the pill, finally legalized, bring about considerable
changes in contraceptive patterns and behavior of Japanese women? The future is
ours to see. |
Page
Top