https://padlet.com/maleahgilliam446/v5l2sw89lstn3hh2 Journal for week 2 PLS324 en-us 2022-06-15 22:41:28 UTC 2022-06-17 01:16:34 UTC hello@padlet.com https://padlet.net/icons/png/1f4d1.png maleahgilliam446 https://padlet.com/maleahgilliam446/v5l2sw89lstn3hh2/wish/2223483301 This law provided for family planning services and permitted induced abortion and sterilization for health reasons. The law was further liberalized in 1952 when needlessly time-consuming procedures were eliminated through the annihilation of local eugenics councils, who originally approached each case individually. 

Chapter XXIX of the Penal Code of Japan makes abortion illegal. However, the Eugenic Protection Law, now known as the Maternal Body Protection Law allows approved doctors to practice abortion with the consent of the mother and her spouse, if the pregnancy is from rape, or if continuing with the pregnancy may endanger the woman. ]]> 2022-06-17 00:20:19 UTC https://padlet.com/maleahgilliam446/v5l2sw89lstn3hh2/wish/2223483301 maleahgilliam446 https://padlet.com/maleahgilliam446/v5l2sw89lstn3hh2/wish/2223502225 In the 1940s, there was a severe population boom in Japan. A midwife by the name of Miyuki Ishikawa managed a maternity home named Kotobuki San'in. Many babies were being born out of wedlock and their birth mothers were too poor to raise their children properly. Due to a decrease in foster parents, Ishikawa chose to neglect many of the infants, which ended in many of them dying. She later attempted to extort the parents and then blame them for the infants' deaths. 

The authorities viewed her homicides as a crime of omission and she was sentenced to four years in prison. This case is regarded as the principal reason the Japanese Government began to consider the legalization of abortion.]]> 2022-06-17 00:40:48 UTC https://padlet.com/maleahgilliam446/v5l2sw89lstn3hh2/wish/2223502225 maleahgilliam446 https://padlet.com/maleahgilliam446/v5l2sw89lstn3hh2/wish/2223519643 Abortion is legal with the consent of the women's spouse. This isn't supposed to apply to unmarried women but is often applied to them too and has led to tragic situations of women leaving their babies in public places to die. 

Japan is currently weighing the option of making abortion pills available. However, with doing so, they're also planning on requiring the spouse's consent for these as well. 

Tsukahara Kumi, a founding member of the organization Action for Safe Abortion Japan said that obtaining a written consent from a partner can become and issue when a women is being forced to give birth against her will by a spouse. She was quoted to say "For women, being forced into a pregnancy they do not want is violence and a form of torture."

Kazuko Fukuda, a reproductive rights activist who leads Nandenaino (Why Don't We Have It?) Project, stated "The law does not stop women from abortion. But when it comes to this consent, sometimes women cannot get it, and women cannot get the abortion in the end." ]]> 2022-06-17 01:02:21 UTC https://padlet.com/maleahgilliam446/v5l2sw89lstn3hh2/wish/2223519643 maleahgilliam446 https://padlet.com/maleahgilliam446/v5l2sw89lstn3hh2/wish/2223525273 Fukushima Mizuho is a lawmaker from the Social Democratic Party in Japan. During a parliamentary hearing she was quoted as saying, "It is weird to require an approval from a spouse when taking a pill, is Japan still living in the middle ages?"

She also stated, "Abortion costs a lot of money, and access to hospitals is very difficult. That is why there is no end to the number of cases, year after year, of people giving birth to babies in toilets and then abandoning them or killing them. What kind of country are we living in?" ]]> 2022-06-17 01:09:05 UTC https://padlet.com/maleahgilliam446/v5l2sw89lstn3hh2/wish/2223525273 maleahgilliam446 https://padlet.com/maleahgilliam446/v5l2sw89lstn3hh2/wish/2223529001 Japan has been slow to provide reproductive options for women. Japan only adopted birth control pills in 1999 becoming the last industrialized country to do so after 44 years of debate. That same year, the Ministry of Health and Welfare approved Viagra in six months. ]]> 2022-06-17 01:12:51 UTC https://padlet.com/maleahgilliam446/v5l2sw89lstn3hh2/wish/2223529001