Between 1949 and 1995, the Japanese government sterilized 16,520 handicapped and retarded women without their consent. The government stated yesterday that it does not plan to apologize, investigate, or provide any compensation to the victims.
Sterilized handicapped women and over a dozen citizens’ advocacy groups had been pressuring the Japanese government to look into the issue, but their claims were ignored until Sweden apologized last month to the 60,000 Swedes who were involuntarily sterilized in the past several decades.
Sterilization was legalized in Japan in 1948 as a way of genetically “improving” the human race by preventing some individuals from reproducing. The law, which was revoked last year, allowed doctors to sterilize mentally and physically handicapped women without their consent as long as the local government approved.
