Japan "Must Make Pill Legal"

Japan's Ministry of Health and Welfare, now reconsidering its ban on steroid contraceptives, has been told that legalizing these products would mean around 300,000 fewer abortions a year.

pioneer pill researcher Carl Djerassi writes in Nature, with James Raphael and Hiromi Maruyama, that the real number of abortions performed in japan each year is more than twice the official figure of 410,000. The government and media must now face openly "the persisting high incidence of abortion in Japan and consider its reduction a high priority on medical and social grounds," they say.

Abortion is not covered by Japan's national health care system and is therefore an "enormous source of income" for physicians, who have a major incentive not to report it for tax reasons, they add.