Women’s right to bodily autonomy: Japan needs to think again
- To have babies or not? Individual free choice must prevail even if a country’s policymakers are keen to raise its birth rate and reverse a population decline for the sake of its economy.
A 24-year Japanese model and four of her young compatriots, who want to undergo sterilization surgeries, recently filed a lawsuit at a Tokyo court to challenge Japan’s Maternal Protection Act of 1996, which deprives them of the opportunity to do so and thus violates their constitutional right to equality and self-determination.
The petitioners’ lawyer argued that the Act smacks of “excessive paternalism" in assuming that “a woman’s body is destined to become a mother," denying them the right to “live a life of their choice."
This Japanese law, a revised version of its earlier Eugenics Protection Law of 1948, has stringent pre-conditions for a woman to undergo a sterilization surgery.
It can only be performed on those who are at risk of endangering their lives due to pregnancy or delivery, or who already have several children, though spousal consent is a must. Japanese law also imposes restrictions on men seeking vasectomies, but Japan has more clinics for these than for sterilization.
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Many Japanese women’s rights activists have rued that the prolonged rule of Japan’s conservative Liberal Democratic Party (LDP) had held back progress on women’s reproductive rights. Observed one: “The name of the Act itself is revealing, making it clear that it intends to protect only those who want to become mothers...."
According to a professor of law at the University of California, Davis, “The medical profession in Japan is still very patriarchal in its thinking… doctors operate as a cartel to maintain certain social norms." A professor of bioethics at a Japanese university has expressed doubt whether progressive reforms will get enough societal support.
Meanwhile, Japan’ official total fertility rate (TFR) fell to 1.2 in 2023, the lowest since 1947. Demographers note that people are getting married later, in their late-thirties, and opting for only one child, even as social economists foresee what one of them describes as “a vicious cycle of fewer children begetting fewer children."
Some of Japan’s East Asian neighbours, like Taiwan (TFR: 1.1), South Korea(1.1), Singapore(1.2) Hong Kong (1.2) and China(1.1), are also witnessed similar trends. Globally, over the last 70 years, the overall population’s TFR has been more than halved, from around five children for each female in 1950 to 2.2 children in 2021.
As Japan faces an acute shortage of people in the working age group and its economy struggles to grow, Tokyo has turned to women, seen as part of the country’s “under-utilized resources," to make up for its labour market deficit.
In 2013, ‘Womenomics’ policies were introduced to tackle the twin challenges of boosting women’s economic participation and reversing its population shrinkage “for the greater good."
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However, Japanese policymakers today face criticism for failing to address ‘real issues,’ like making available childcare facilities for women to help them combine professional success and motherhood, and closing the wage-gap between men and women.
Likewise, many East Asian economies have logged high rates of economic growth, but women continue to bear the ‘double burden’ of social norms, which, on one hand, limit their labour market participation, and on the other, dissuade many working women from marrying and having children for fear of ‘motherhood penalties.’
In South Korea, over 40% of women have a career break after marriage. In Japan, the social ideal of a ‘good wife, wise mother’ prevails. In China, unmarried urban females over 27 are called ‘leftover women’, regardless of career success. Wherever motherhood is seen as a milestone and choosing a childless life is frowned upon, feminist writers have protested.
In the West, Simone de Beauvoir wrote about the routine and repetitive chores of motherhood and how the social system ties mothers up in a life of mundane domestic tasks as far back as in 1943, in her book The Second Sex.
Betty Freidan, in The Feminine Mystique (1963), popularized the idea of a woman “finding her personal fulfilment in her own femininity, instead of fitting into the fabricated feminine image." Ellen Peck, in The Baby Trap (1971), argued that “having kids is a big business to capitalist society."
Behavioural scientist Paul Dolan observed that “women who are unmarried and childless are the happiest subgroup of the population… and the traditional symbol of success, be it marriage or having children, did not necessarily correlate with happiness level."
Meanwhile, many women and couples are choosing a ‘child-free’ life across the world, especially in developed countries. In the US, about 44% of childless adults in the 18-49 age group don’t expect to ever have children, and their reasons aren’t circumstantial factors like medical issues, as Pew Research found in 2021. A YouGov study in 2020 found similar dispositions in the UK.
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Even in India, many women have begun to exercise their own preferences. Research indicates that childlessness is growing along with increasing education and development in the country.
As one of the petitioners in the Japanese case asked, “If a woman’s lifestyle [choice] of not getting married or having children is still rejected in society… is it natural to have children only for the sake of the country?"
This is a valid question for a country that seeks to raise its TFR. Shouldn’t the contemporary world, which pushes women to motherhood for economic gains, listen to the voices of women? As women embrace new lifestyles, values and ideas, shouldn’t child-bearing always be a matter of individual choice?
