Japan’s disability groups highlight ‘sense of crisis’ over assisted reproductive technology bill

Written with extracts translated from Kyodo News

November 27 2020

Katsunori Fujii, representative of the Japan Council on Disability (JD), held a press conference at the Members’ Office Building on the 27th on a special bill of the Civil Code that clarifies the parent-child relationship of children born in assisted reproductive technology involving third parties. He expressed a sense of crisis, saying that there was a clause leading to the eugenic policy, and demanded that it be deleted.

The problem is that the text of the bill requires consideration for children born via assisted reproductive technology to be born in good physical and mental health. It advocates “preventing the birth of bad offspring” and states that there is a problem that leads to the old eugenic protection law that forced people with disabilities to undergo sterilization.