Ribu’s approach to abortion demonstrates how the movement affirmed women’s procreative capacities and resisted the government’s attempt to control their sex. The movement’s stance on abortion should be contextualised within the history of abortion in Japan. Part of Japan’s rapid modernisation process during the last few decades of the nineteenth century involved population control legislation. The government began to restrict the activities of midwives and made abortion a criminal act in 1880. In wartime, the government promulgated the National Eugenic Law (Kokumin Yusei Ho) in 1940 to prevent the birth of handicapped or ‘defective’ children.
This was revised as the Eugenic Protection Law (YUsei Hogo Ho) in 1948. An amendment in May 1949 included a provision to permit abortions based on economic reasons that might harm the mother’s well-being (Norgren 2001: 44). Even though abortion was still categorised as a crime, women and their doctors utilised this legalised exception liberally in the post-war period. (The current version of the law — revised in 1996 — is called the Law for the Protection of the Maternal Body [Botai Hogo Ho].)
By the early 1970s, the government, business interests and conservative religious groups aligned to try to limit access to abortion. The ruling government party, the Liberal Democratic Party (LDP), made four attempts to revise this law during the early 1970s. Critics regarded the attempts to revise the Eugenic Protection Law as a dangerous resurgence of the Japanese government’s attempt to control its citizens for a national cause. Whereas the wartime state required women to bear children to serve in the emperor’s army, in the postwar period, ribu activists criticised the government’s attempt to make women bear children to serve as productive workers for capitalism and the state.
In contrast with other liberal and radical feminist discourse, ribu discourse around abortion did not emphasise a woman’s right to abortion. Instead, their slogan called for ‘the creation of a society where we [women] want to give birth’. At a demonstration against the revisions in June 1972, a ribu movement banner declared, ‘A society where humans can live. We want to live. We want to give birth!!’
In their feminist approach to reproduction and mothering, they thus emphasised the creation of a society where women would desire to give birth. Yonezu, who, as mentioned above, co-founded Thought Group SEX, was influential in this approach. During her childhood,
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Figure Т2Л Demonstration to protest revisions to the Eugenic Protection Law, Asahi Shinbun, 11 June 1972. Courtesy of gettyimages.
Yonezu suffered spinal cord paralysis, which impaired the development of her right leg. She lived at the Ribu Shinjuku Centre and was highly visible in the movement and the media. Her central presence as a woman with a disability and a ribu activist stimulated a rethinking of the group’s position on abortion, especially given that the Eugenic Protection Law revisions were designed to prevent the birth of children with disabilities. Some other ribu activists, like Takeda Miyuki, had connections with citizens’ groups advocating for persons with disabilities. This consciousness of those with disabilities furthered a critique of the dominant logic of capitalist productivity. They recognised that abortions were being encouraged to prevent the birth of babies with disabilities and cautioned against an emphasis on a women’s ‘right to abortion’. Rather, they emphasised a holistic approach about the quality oflife, contesting the government’s right to determine the value of a human life and to categorise persons with disabilities as expendable. This criticism was directed at the subordination of human life to the capitalist calculus of productivity and profits. Marxist discourse thus also inflected ribu’s feminist critique of eugenics along with their solidarity with the disabled.
In 1973, activists at the Ribu Shinjuku Center formed an alliance against the revisions, which was one of their largest campaigns. This alliance involved a total of 29 women’s groups which formed the Committee to Prevent the Revision of the Eugenic Protection Law. That same year, they staged a sit-in at the Ministry of Health demanding answers and accountability from ministry officials about these proposed changes. These changes would eliminate the ‘economic reasons’ clause that enabled women to access abortion relatively easily. The revised law would limit the reasons for an abortion to the mother’s mental health (seishinteki riyU) or foetal disease or defect (Norgren 2001: 62). Ribu activists and other critics regarded these proposed changes as shifting blame for abortion to the individual woman and further devaluing the lives ofthe disabled.
In 1974, the revisions failed to pass the Upper House. Doctors, advocacy groups for persons with disabilities and women’s groups considered this a victory. The affirmation of a woman’s choice to give birth continued to inform feminist organising around reproductive politics for the next several decades.