Abortion in Japan

Abortion in Japan

Abortion in Japan has been legal since 1949, a decade before any other industrialized countries. Abortions in Japan became so commonplace that criticism was inevitable. Japan was the place for foreigners to go when they wanted to have an abortion. The pill, which has a high success rate as a birth control method, was legalized late in Japan. Most people from Japan state the pill is too expensive and have too many side effects and prefer to use a condom instead. Japan performed approximately 256,000 abortions in 2007, or 9.3 per 1,000 women, with their ages ranging from age 15 to 49. This number has been decreasing since the 1950s to 40 to 50 per 1000 women (Kato, 2009). The main reason abortions are performed is that the couples are not married with financial difficulties coming in second. Most abortions in Japan take place in the first eleven weeks and most were performed on women under the age of twenty. Abortion was criminalized in 1880 under the first penal code, because Japan had a high birthrate and infanticide was not uncommon (Kato, 2009).

According to "Abortion in Japan" (1993), when one has an abortion, one commits a crime in Japan, except for the following conditions: mother's health is threatened, mental illness, a disease that is hereditary, leprosy, and a pregnancy that results from a woman being raped...

According to "Abortion in Japan" (1993), pregnancy and childbirth cause more than 500,000 women to die each year. A poorly performed abortion causes 100,000 - 200,000 of these deaths. Women also experience reproductive problems from these inadequately performed abortions. Some women even develop HIV or AIDS from improperly done abortions. The problems of older women are exacerbated by health systems which ignore their health needs, i.e., unavailability of suitable contraceptives.

Abortions and repeat abortions may explain the significant increases in pelvic inflammatory disease (PID), uterine hemorrhage, sepsis, pain due to endometritis, retained fetal or placental tissue and the increasing evidence of an abortion-breast cancer link."

A large number of the women today who are having abortions are young women who later, after marriage, want to have children and raise a family. There is approximately a 10% chance of having a childless marriage because one partner is sterile. However, if the woman has had an abortion, these odds are increased drastically. "Induced Abortion, A Documented Report" (1971, p. 30) reports that the probability of a woman becoming sterile after having an abortion is increased by 10%. Similar reports from Poland, Holland, Russia, Norway, and Japan produce similar statistics" (Dr. Mrs. J. C. Willke 2006).

Abortions have been the mainstream method of birth control in Japan for a long time. Those women who have had an abortion and practice Japanese Buddhism give