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About Medford mail tribune. (Medford, Or.) 1909-1989 | View Entire Issue (Oct. 3, 1963)
it Jl Abortion Rate Exceeds Bi ribs in Japan- Labo By ROBERT METCALFE I nited Press International TOKYO (UPI) - Japan's jp.ivjtie method of birth control through mass abortion has shown such dramatic results that the problem now is to per suade people to have more children. But small families are becoming more and more pop ular. Japan is starting to find it self with an abundance of old people and a looming shortage of youthful labor power. Abortion is so quick and cheap mat the unmarried mother is a vanishing phenomenon. The abortion rate is higher than the birth rate: more than two mil lion abortions every year. The irony is that birth con trol through abortion was never a goal of national policy. The express aim of the abortion law is simply to protect the mother's health and economic well-being, and to prevent the birth of children with hereditary diseas es, i The complaint is that Japan- j ese women are having abor-! tions at an alarming rate to : prevent the birth of unwanted children while official gov ernment policy is to control births by more conventional means of family planning. A debate now rages among j legislators, women's groups. ! doctors and sociologists over j new demands that abortion laws J be made more strict so they j can't be used for trifling rea- j sons. Nearly three-quarters of the j women who have had abortions say they are bothered by con science, according to a recent survey by the Population Prob lems Research council of To kyo's Mainichi newspapers. More than to per cent of 3.600 married women polled by the survey (many declined to ans wer) have had abortions. One j woman had had eight. j Japan's population is about 96 million. It has increased at an average rate of a million a year since 1950. r Shortage Results There were about 1. 600.0(H) babies born in 1962 for a slight increase over the 1061 birth rate of 16.8 per thousand population. In 19-10. there were 72 million Japanese in the mainland is lands, and 80 million counting Japanese residents in Korea. Okinawa and Formosa, which then were included in the cen sus. In those days Japanese militarists encouraged large families. After the war Japan was poverty-stricken. Birth control was one way to make sure every mother and child got proper food and medical care at a time of hunger and few resources. But today Japan is prosper ous. She needs more productive people. Industries are booming and there is little unemploy ment. She is almost self-sufficient in most basic foods. Ex cellent medical care is avail able through group-insurance plans. Age Increased The Japanese are healthy. They are physically stronger and taller (by three inches) and they can expect to live 18 to 22 years longer (72 for women, 68 for men) than they could 20 years ago. Today Japan's infant mortal ity rate is only seven out of every thousand, on a par with Europe's. Fifty years ago, the rate was 21 per thousand. Only 17 years ago, at the height of a baby boom hen soldiers were home from war. 34 babies were born every year for every thousand population. Today the birth rate is 17 per thousand, again on a par with most of Europe. Now that safe birth and heal thy babies are the rule, family planners would like to see a few more come into the world. But most Japanese couples now are happy with only two children and the trend becomes more entrenched each year, ac cording to the newspaper sur vey. It found . Only 22 per cent of those with two children want another child: 90 per cent of those with three children want no more; half of those with one child would like to have only one more: and most of those without children want only two. PAGES 1 to 12 Only 12 per ent of Japanese families Iwve four children; 21 per cent hive one child: 25 per cent have three children: ai4 35 per cent have two children. Many families are kept small, the survey found, largely be cause parents want to be able to give their children the best SECTION C MedfordWtribune MEDFOHD. OREGON, THl'RSDAYrOCTOBER3Tl963 tin fet2f.r pcsibl education. Only 12 per ctnt of tkt persons questioned said they practive birth control j out of economic necessity the I main reason given two years i ago. ' j Japan's birth rate is the low-! est by far in Asia. Over-populated India has more than 35 births per thousand people every year: Korea has more than 40. Com munist China's population is est imated at more than 700 mil lion and about 15 million Chi nese reportedly are born every year. Birth rates in other countries have been reduced Puerto Rico's from 41 to 30 per thou-: sand since 19-19: Singapore's from 43 to 30 since 1957; Hong Kong's from 38 to 34 in two re-1 cent years. But no reduction is so spectacular as Japan's. i Literacy Rate High Japan's high literacy rate , (nearly 100 per cent), the easy availability of information on birth control and permissive abortion laws have made the sharp drop in births possible. In most western countries, a woman who seeks an abortion must, unless she can prove ex treme medical grounds, risk her life outside the law at the hands of abortionists who may oper ate under unhygienic conditions and charge exorbitant fees. Fifteen years ago one out of every 500 Japanese women died under induced abortions. Today the death rate has been re duced to one out of every 14.500 operations. Western women have come to Japan for abortions be cause of the skill acquired by Japanese doctors. But they must do so in sec retas Sherri Finkbine, an Arizona housewife and tele vision intervir, discovered in her much publicized quest to ( end a pregnancy because she had taken thalidomide pills and feared her child would be de formed. She was denied a visa to Japan because the reason for her trip was known. She got an abortion in Sweden in stead. Illegal Abortions Most abortions in Japan are illegal. Japan's criminal code still provides penalties a year in prison for the woman, up to five years for the doctor for abortions performed outside the provisions of the eugenic pro tection law. That law. enacted in 1948, makes exceptions under the nriminnl m n A o tn m-fivnnf phil. uren oeillg uuui wun tieieuumy mental and physical diseases, and to protect the life and health of women (abortions can be ob tained up to the last day of the seventh month of pregnancy, though 93 per cent are per formed within three months). How ever, it is difficult to make distinctions between le gal and illegal abortions in Japan, since the exceptions have virtually become the rule. The prosecution of illegal abortions is unheard of. A woman in good health, for instance, can have an abortion on the grounds that her finan cial state would worsen and ul timately affect her health if she had the child. One result of freely prac ticed abortions is that unwed mothers are rare in Japan. Doctors usually perform abor tions in secret to conceal in come, but they do so as well because many women don't want their abortions known. Abortions, which are not cov ered by health insurance plans, are the main source of income for many doctors who run small clinics. Some perform 100 abor tions every month. The fee is up to 5.000 yen ($14) in Tokyo and other major cities, 3.000 yen ($9) or less in smaller centers. Criminal abortionists in North America charge as much as $200 to $1,000 or more. Japan is an "abortion para dise," admits Dr. Atsushi Han abusa of Tokyo's metropolitan Ebara hospital. "It is regrettable," he said. 1 "Many women ask for an abor-i tion on the sole grounds that it is 'too early' to have a baby." He said more than half the 1,500 expectant mothers who are treated in the Ebara hos pital every month have had previous abortions. Any doctor who is qualified to perform an abortion can de cide if a request for one should be granted. Opponents of the law argue that two physicians should make the decision and the economic reason clause should be struck out. There are periodic re-appraisals of the law when abuses are disclosed, and there have been some attempts to change it. One major argument for keeping the law as it stands is that without free-and-easy abor tion, Japan could not have brought about the spectacular drop in its annual birth rate. Regret it Later The newspaper survey, which reported that abortion is prac ticed at the rate of one out of every 2.2 Japanese women, al so found nearly 70 per cent said they regretted it or later felt bothered by their conscience. Sterilization operations that do not remove reproductive glands are also permitted by the eugenic protection law. Al most all of Japan's annual 35,000-odd sterilization opera tions are performed on women on their husbands' orders. Family planners have been arguing before women's groups that it is far better that men have the operation so healthy women don't lose their ability to bear children. Oral contraceptive tablets are not yet legal in Japan because the Healty Ministry is not sure they are safe. Some women have complained of headaches after experimenting with oral tablets. 1 Qiafajl mm J&riiewwmnuiHCt' i IJJfifflna 'OTi"iSI 'V mm rz i we mean! NEW LOW PRICE Kentucky 's Finest Bourbon for over 150 Years! $475 OT. (CODE III C (CODE 1S1-0) Also Available BOTTLED IN BOND 00 PINT 0ISTIUE0 and eoiiuo sr WATERFILL AND FffA2IFR OISIIIIFRV f-ft K Proof BAR0ST0WN, KELSON COUNTY, KENTUCKY RESTS FROM FILMING Actor Richard Burton, who seems to have weathered the trip from Cleopatra's Egypt to modern-day Mexico City, takes time out from filming a movie for a chat with actress Sue Lyon, who won fame for her starring role in the movie "Lolita." (UPI) Season of Year Said To Have No interstate Herd trrecr on uicer o : . c..u: em nig juujtxi By DELOS SMITH UPI Science Editor NEW YORK (UPI) Statisti cal proof is now offered that the season of the year does not in fluence a man's ulcer. The medical scientists who produced it hoped it would kill a common belief among ulcer men and even their physicians that there are seasons when ulcers get worse. Drs. Syed Z. Ahmed, Martin Levine and Rodnan B. Finkbiner s 0 1 v e d the difficult measuring of when a peptic ulcer is worse by using only the ultimate worsening. That is hemorrhaging or perforation, and when either happens it is too grave to allow for statistical error. The scientists work in the gas trointestinal research laboratory of the Pennsylvania Hospital. Philadelphia. With punch cards and a bookkeeping machine they analysed 411 completely docu- menied cases of hemorrhaging or perforation treated in the hospital during the 10 years from 1949 to 1958. Existence H as Proven In each case the presence of an ulcer crater in either the stomach or duodenum had been proved either by x-ray or in sur gery or by autopsy. The season of the year of drastic worsening was established in the hospital records, of course. Autumn was taken to begin Sept. 21. winter, December 21, spring, March 21, and summer. June 21. Statistically 29 per cent of the worsenings occurred in autumn, which was the highest. In summer 21.6 per cent look place. But the occurrences in winter and spring were 24.6 per cent and 24.8 per cent respectively. No matter what statistical . checking formula you apply, ! there is no statistical signifi-1 cance in those differences and the scientists were emphatic in saying so. in the morbid chit-chat among the high-pressure ulcer men in American life, the belief is that spring and autumn are the "ul cer seasons" and summer is the ' season when a man is least like ly to hale a flare-up. Not only did the over-all sta- j tistics disprove that: it was, proved again when the scientists broke the statistics down for year-by-year analysis in the hope of demonstrating regular cycles if such cycles existed. Slimmer Was Worst i In two of the 10 years summer had the highest incidence of se-1 vcrc worsening and it had the lowest in only three years. Au- tumn had the lowest incidence in one year and was tied for lowest in another year. Spring had the lowest inci dence in two years and the high est in two other years. Winter had the lowest in three years and the highest in one. "The seasonal variation in peptic ulcer is very slight and variable from year to year." the scientists said in their re port to the American College of Physicians. "The concept of spring and fall exacerbation of peptic ulcer has been exagger ated." They blamed the mistaken support medical science has pre j viuusly given to the "ulcer sea son" theory on the difficulties of measuring. Their method eliminated many of the varia bles responsible for false con clusions, they said. Everybody out of the rut . ?Jtle64 JBnicks ure here! YREKA. Calif. (UPI) Leg-j islative committees from Cali-', fornia and Oregon opened a two-1 day meeting here, today to dis cuss possible ways to bolster the interstate mule deer herd, which apparently was hard hit by the j 1959-61 drought. I The hearing will move to Klamath Fals. Ore.. Friday. The lawmakers specifically wcie scheduled to discuss the practicability of establishing an : interstate commission to regu- j late the mule deer that winter I in California and summer in Oregon. Along with that, the leg- .1 tslators were to talk over pos sible ways to improve the deer range. Track counts of interstate mule deer have dropped from a high of 17,625 in 1954 to a low this year of 7.191. Likewise, the buck" kill by both states in the interstate herd has fallen from a record 6.083 in 1959 tn only j 2.801 last season. j Seven Counties Affected j An interstate compact, as ten-; latively suggested, would cover : the California counties of Modoc and Lassen and portions of Sis kiyou and Shasta, and the Ore gon counties of Lake and Klam- SALTY NEW YORK (L'Pl) -A 17.300 ton mountain of rock is piled up in Port Newark. N. .1. When it snows, it pours on streets and highways in the New York area to keep traffic moving. Diamond Crystal Salt company, owner ol i the pile, said it is large enough i to fill 400 freight cars. ath and the. southern portion of Harney. Right now, the California fish and game commission regulates all deer in this state, taking ad vice from the department of fish and game. The same system works in Oregon. At the root of the whole issue for California is a hot hassle over deer management. And one person in the thick of the battle is assemblywoman Pauline Da vis. D-Portola, chairman of the California committee at today's meeting. She basically disagreed with the California department of fish and game's deer management policies, which include balanc ing the herds through controlled hunting of antlerlcss deer. Mrs. Davis maintains that hunting pressure is largely to blame for the lessening deer herds, while the department puts the finger on environmental conditions. Meeting jointly were the Cali fornia Assembly legislative in terim committee on fish and game, and the Oregon special interim committee on deer. THE DANMOORE HOTEL 1217 SW Mormon St. PORTLAND, OREGON All traniient gucili. All thoie who come, return, Rttes nor high, not low. Free garage, new location H block Itom hotel. Open until 10 p.m. TV's and radioi. Reputation for clcanlineil. ! CHILDREN UNDER ! SEVEN NO CHARGE Village Variety and Garden Shop Next to Piggly Wiggly . . . 771 STEWART AVENUE House Plants! 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V-6 or V-8 'you'll liVe their new gas econ omy), new, smoother, extra-cost option, Super Turbme Tranomiscions (and who, but Buick, would build m an altitude compensator?). Youngest looking Fisher Bodies in townl Visit a showroom, sit In any one ol the ne Buicks, and practice this short easy Tine: "My Buick." Sounds good, doesn't it? ...abote all. they're DUCKS! SEE YOUR LOCAL AUTHORIZED BUICK DEALER. AUTHORIZED BUICK DEALER IN THIS AREA: SKINNER BUICK CADILLAC . 143 South Riverside Each Sunday Only! o 1 (6) 0 to) (P)
