A Japanese court on Tuesday ruled as unconstitutional the now-defunct eugenics protection law that authorized the government to stop people with disabilities from having children, but rejected a claim for damages sought by five people.
Some Japanese disability rights groups have highlighted issues with the bill, as it requires the child to be in ‘good physical and mental health’.
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.
Three people, a married couple in their 70s in Osaka Prefecture who have hearing impairments, and a woman (77) in the Kinki region who has intellectual disabilities, were allegedly forced to undergo sterilization surgery under the former Eugenic Protection Law.
On June 30, the Tokyo District Court rejected the claim of a a man in his 70s demanding compensation for being forced to undergo sterilization under the now defunct Eugenic Protection Law. The Tokyo District Court ruled that “the right to claim damages has already disappeared,”
With the spread of the new coronavirus infection, due to the lack of ventilators, a debate about who should give priority has started in Japan.
‘Junko Iizuka’, said she “has been feeling down” since the ruling. She divorced for not being able to have a child, and such sorrow triggered mental health conditions, such as post-traumatic stress disorder (PTSD) and depression. For Iizuka, who has repeatedly thought of killing herself due to the treatment, it’s baffling why the government is not held accountable.
“The government will give compensation to 22 people who underwent forced sterilization under a now-defunct eugenics law but do not have direct records of the surgery, in its first such approval, a committee said Monday.”
“Thousands of men and women in Japan who were forcibly sterilised are to receive compensation from the government, decades after they became victims of a eugenics law designed to prevent the birth of so-called inferior children. In April, MPs passed a bill that will compensate 25,000 people who were sterilised from 1948 until the law was abolished in 1996. They include 16,500 people who were operated on against their will.”
“only about 3,000, or slightly more than 10 percent of the people who underwent state-ordered sterilizations, have been identified.”
Barrier Free Japan