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Paper short abstract

After World War II, Japan selectively decriminalized abortion in the Eugenic Protection Law. Why did a law designed to block births of “inferior descendants” also permit abortion in cases of rape? Rape by foreign soldiers was coded as a racial threat and mixed-blood fetuses were aborted en masse.

Paper long abstract

After defeat in World War II, Japan’s government selectively reversed its longstanding policy of criminalizing abortion. The law that codified this shift, the 1948 Eugenic Protection Law, endorsed abortion as a means of managing the “quality and quantity” of Japan’s population. Why did a law designed to block the births of “inferior descendants” also sanction abortion in cases of rape? The eugenic stakes of rape are rooted in a narrative of national victimization foregrounding the rape of Japanese women by foreign “races” of men who invaded and occupied the country. Between Japan’s defeat in 1945 and passage of the Eugenic Protection Law in 1948, abortion and infanticide were both illegal. Yet “mixed blood” offspring sired by foreign soldiers were targeted for elimination by civic medical groups and Japan’s Ministry of Welfare in a nationwide eugenic campaign. While the subsequent Eugenic Protection Law gave no de jure standing to race as grounds for abortion, the fact that rape was coded as a racial threat rendered the Law a de facto tool for racial engineering. The Eugenic Protection Law is sometimes celebrated for its “progressive” treatment of abortion. However, for Japanese women who had sexual relations with foreign soldiers, abortion was not an option granted by a democratic government newly concerned with women’s rights. Abortion was an imperative imposed by a diverse array of governmental and non-governmental actors uniting behind an ideology of racial purity.