Japan

ABORTION POLICY
Grounds on which abortion is permitted:
To save the life of the woman
To preserve physical health
To preserve mental health
Rape or incest
Foetal impairment
Economic or social reasons
Available on request

Yes
Yes
No*
Yes
No*
Yes
No

Additional requirements:
Induced abortions are allowed only within the first 24 weeks of gestation. All legal abortions must be
performed within medical facilities at the discretion of a physician designated by a local medical association.
The consent of the woman or her spouse is required, while the consent of a mentally retarded woman can be
given by her guardian. When the pregnancy is a result of rape or incest, the abortion can be performed without
the legal consent of the woman.
______________
* While Japans abortion law allows abortions to be performed on the specific ground of physical health, it contains no specific mental
health grounds, nor does it specifically authorize abortions to be performed in the case of foetal impairment. However, since the law allows
abortions to be performed for socio-economic reasons, mental health and foetal impairment grounds are presumably covered by this ground.

REPRODUCTIVE HEALTH CONTEXT

Government view on fertility level:

Too low

Government intervention concerning fertility level:

No intervention

Government policy on contraceptive use:

Indirect support provided

Percentage of currently married women using

modern contraception (aged 15-49, 1994):

53*

Total fertility rate (1995-2000):

1.4

Age-specific fertility rate (per 1,000 women aged 15-19, 1995-2000):

Government has expressed particular concern about:

Morbidity and mortality resulting from induced abortion
Complications of childbearing and childbirth

No
Yes

Maternal mortality ratio (per 100,000 live births, 1990):

National
Developed countries

18
27

Female life expectancy at birth (1995-2000):

82.9

Some women reported more than one methods; figure shown assumes that modern methods were not used in combination
with other modern methods.

Source: The Population Policy Data Bank maintained by the Population Division of the Department for Economic and Social Affairs of the
United Nations Secretariat. For additional sources, see list of references.

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Japan
BACKGROUND
Abortion in Japan is governed by two pieces of legislation. The first is the Criminal Code, which was
first enacted in 1880 and in its present form dates from 1908. It prohibits the performance of all abortions; a
woman who performs her own abortion is subject to up to one years imprisonment, and a person who
performs an abortion on another is subject to up to two years imprisonment. Medical personnel are subject
to harsher penalties. This prohibition against abortion reflects primarily the desire of the Japanese
Government in the late nineteenth and first half of the twentieth century to increase the nations rate of
population growth in order to support Japanese expansion.
The second piece of legislation governing abortion is the Eugenic Protection Law. This Law has its
source in eugenics legislation that was enacted in 1940 and is patterned on similar National Socialist
German legislation of the 1930s. In its original form, the Law had a two-fold purpose: 1) to increase the
number of Japanese; and 2) to prevent the birth of genetically inferior offspring and promote a genetically
healthy population. It permitted sterilization only for the prevention of hereditary diseases, and abortion only
to save the life of the pregnant woman.
The current Eugenic Protection Law was approved in 1948 and, as amended in 1949 and 1952, was in
effect with largely the same wording until 1996. The Law was a product of socio-economic conditions in
Japan in the years immediately following the Second World War, when the country faced a serious imbalance
between its rapidly growing population and war-shattered economy. The need to limit family size became
increasingly apparent and there was a high incidence of illegally induced abortion. The Government responded
by promoting family planning through the methods then available, which were mostly traditional, and by
legalizing abortion.
In addition to authorizing sterilization on a variety of grounds, the Law allowed abortions to be
performed in five situations: (1) when the pregnant woman or her spouse suffered from a hereditary disease
or mental disease; (2) when a relative to the fourth degree of either spouse suffered from such a disease; (3)
when either spouse suffered from leprosy; (4) when the health of the mother might be seriously affected from
the physical or economic viewpoint; and (5) in the case of sexual crime. Appended to the Law was a list of
medical conditions that justified the performance of an abortion under (1) and (2).
Under the Law, an abortion could be performed only in a medical facility by a physician designated by the
local medical association. The consent of the woman and her spouse was required unless the spouse was
unascertainable, unable to express his will or had died after conception of the foetus. If the woman who was to
undergo the abortion was insane or mentally retarded, consent had to be given by the womans guardian.
Owing to the provision in the law of socio-economic grounds for abortion in (4) above, abortions became
available virtually on request since the pregnant woman needed only to find a physician who was willing to
perform the operation. The time limit for the performance of abortions was not specifically set by the Law.
Rather, the Law designated viability as the limit for all abortions. Subsequently, notices issued by the
Ministry of Health and Welfare moved the point of viability from an initial eight months to 23 weeks.
Although these notices, technically, do not have binding legal effect, they indicate the Governments
understanding of the Law and are almost universally followed.
There have been two recent changes to Japans abortion law, one minor and one major. The minor
change was the issuance by the Minister of Health and Welfare in 1991 of a new notice lowering the

Source: The Population Policy Data Bank maintained by the Population Division of the Department for Economic and Social Affairs of the
United Nations Secretariat. For additional sources, see list of references.

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Japan
Governments understanding of the point of viability to 22 weeks. This change is apparently in accord with
the Governments view of progress in the development of the medical technology necessary to keep
prematurely born children alive.
The major change involves a large-scale rewriting of the Eugenic Protection Law. Owing in part to the
requests of organizations representing the disabled, as well as to modern scientific knowledge about
inherited diseases, in 1996 the Government proposed and quickly enacted revisions to the law designed to
remove its eugenic features. All references to the word eugenic have been removed from the Law, which is
now known as the Maternal Protection Law. Also removed were the provisions of section 1 of the Law
stating that its purpose was to prevent an increase in inferior descendants, and the parts of the Law that dealt
with procedures for obtaining official approval for eugenic operations, the Eugenic Protection Committee,
eugenic examinations and payment of expenses. The Law no longer authorizes the involuntary sterilization
of mental patients and those with mental weaknesses. Most significantly, legislators dropped from the Law
the eugenic indications for sterilization as well as abortion and the list of medical conditions appended to the
Law that served as grounds for sterilization and abortion on eugenic grounds. Thus, abortions are now
permitted only when the health of the mother may be affected from the physical or economic view and in
cases of sexual offences.
Changes in the Law were supported by all political parties and were welcomed by advocates for the
disabled, particularly after it became known that over 16,000 people with hereditary or mental disorders had
been sterilized between 1949 and 1994 under the former version of the Law. However, some womens
groups were displeased that the legislative changes had not been more extensive and that they had not been
consulted prior to enactment of the changes. Some hoped for the passage of wide-ranging reproductive
health legislation, stressing the rights of women in this area.
With the liberalized law enacted in 1948, abortion became the primary mode of fertility control in Japan.
Abortion played a significant role during the early years of the overall fertility decline, with contraception
subsequently playing a greater role. According to health authorities, the number of induced abortions in Japan
continued to increase after the 1948 law was enacted. A peak was reached in 1955, when more than 1,170,000
abortions were reported against about 1,731,000 officially registered live births. Thereafter, the number of
induced abortions gradually decreased. As of 1983, slightly over 567,000 casesabout half of the number of
abortions that were performed in 1955were reported.
The vast majority of abortions in Japan have been performed under the maternal health protection
indication, which is in effect a combination of medical and socio-economic reasons. Nearly all abortions have
occurred within the first trimester. In contrast to the general declining trend in the total incidence of abortion,
the number of abortions obtained by women with low parity and by teenagers has been increasing since the late
1970s. As reported by one study in 1990, pregnancies among adolescents in Japan occur at a rate of about 22
per 1,000, and most of them end in abortion.
The high incidence of abortion in Japan is believed to be due in part to Government restrictions on
contraceptive use. Oral contraception was illegal in Japan until 1999. Until then, it could be obtained from
physicians for the control of irregular menstrual cycles and for other medical purposes but not for birth control.
The intrauterine device was legalized in Japan only in 1974 after its effectiveness and safety had been proved
abroad. The National Survey on Family Planning in Japan conducted in 1986 found that about 80 per cent of
contraceptive users relied upon the condom. The survey results also demonstrated a relatively high rate of
contraceptive failure; about 31 per cent of the women surveyed had undergone one or more abortions.

Source: The Population Policy Data Bank maintained by the Population Division of the Department for Economic and Social Affairs of the
United Nations Secretariat. For additional sources, see list of references.

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