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15 Eugenics, Reproductive Technologies, and the Feminist Dilemma in Japan Miho Ogino In the last few decades, people living in the highly industrialized world have witnessed the rapid and rampant development of reproductive technologies in the areas of fertility treatment and prenatal screening. Changes in technology can bring important changes in the way people think about reproduction, family and children, and life itself—but development in the medical ¤eld tends to proceed without waiting for suf¤cient discussion and agreement in society. There have been attempts in some nations to control the development and clinical application of new reproductive technologies by enacting restrictive law, but in this era of globalization, both the news of and the desire to try newly available technologies cannot be stopped at national borders. In Japan, for instance , both surrogacy and egg or embryo donation as a means of assisted reproduction are inhibited by the professional guidelines of the Japan Association of Obstetrician-Gynecologists (new legislation regarding reproduction is now underway). However, we know that there are many Japanese couples who travel to the United States,where in some states they can ¤nd doctors and women who, in exchange for money, will help them to have “their own” babies. A Japanese woman who is a television personality recently published books describing in detail the process by which she and her husband ¤nally got twins through a surrogate birth contract in Nevada. We also know that some of the Japanese women who succeeded in becoming pregnant with the help of the reproduction business in the United States were well past their biological age of childbearing. It is an undeniable fact that women bear a disproportionate part of the burden of the new reproductive technologies, because it is not men but women who provide their bodies as the essential site for the production of ovum, implantation and pregnancy, childbirth, and, as in the case of selective prenatal diagnosis , abortion. It is women’s bodies that undergo technological intervention, whether it is to get pregnant or to terminate pregnancy. Accordingly, evaluating the meaning of new reproductive technologies has been an inevitable and pressing problem for feminists in many countries. Do they provide women with more alternatives and thus liberate them from biological destiny? Or are these tech- nologies another example of the manipulation and exploitation of women’s bodies and reproductive capacities in a pro¤t-oriented world? The answers cannot be simple, because there are differences of interest and opinion among individual women. Nevertheless, one can ¤nd common ground in the attitudes of women of a given country because their attitudes toward reproductive technologies often re®ect the speci¤c historical conditions of that country and women’s experiences in their respective societies. For example, in America, one cannot ignore the impact of Roe v. Wade and the subsequent abortion controversy if she or he wants to understand reproductive politics and culture in the United States. In the case of Japan, it is the Eugenic Protection Law and problems related to it that have heavily impacted feminist thought. Accordingly , it is necessary to examine in detail the experience of the Japanese people under this law. Following its defeat in World War II, Japan immediately faced a serious problem—overpopulation. While the national territory was reduced by 40 percent due to the loss of overseas colonies, large numbers of Japanese returned home as demobilized soldiers or repatriated citizens. With the help of the postwar baby boom, the population expanded at an alarming rate. Amid starvation and confusion due to the near-complete devastation of the social and economic infrastructure, people resorted to illegal abortion, child abandonment, and infanticide to deal with unwanted pregnancies. The Japanese government and the occupation administration, headed by General Douglas MacArthur, quickly responded to this “state of national emergency” by passing the Eugenic Protection Law in 1948. Under this law, induced abortion was made legal either for eugenic reasons or when pregnancy was a result of rape or was a grave health hazard for the woman. In the next year, economic reasons were added as legitimate grounds for abortion. Another amendment in 1952 made the previously required investigation of each abortion application by a local screening committee unnecessary, and consent of the woman’s husband and the attending obstetrician-gynecologist became the only prerequisite for the operation. The preexisting penal code that banned abortion was never repealed, but since there was no stipulation of speci¤c economic criteria for the physician to apply in deciding...

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