The abortion pill is to become available in Japan for the first time after the health ministry approved a drug used to terminate early-stage pregnancies.
Abortion is legal in Japan up to 22 weeks, but consent is usually required from a spouse or partner, and until now a surgical procedure had been the only option.
The ministry said in a notification to healthcare officials on Friday it had approved a drug made by Linepharma.
The British pharmaceutical company filed its product, a two-step treatment of mifepristone and misoprostol, for approval in Japan in December 2021.
Similar medication is available in many countries including France, which first approved the abortion pill in 1988, and the US, where it has been available since 2000.
The approval of the pill to end pregnancies up to nine weeks follows a ministry panel endorsement, which was postponed for a month as thousands of public submissions were made.
The national broadcaster NHK said the total cost of the abortion pill and a medical consultation would be around 100,000 yen (£585). Abortions are not covered by public health insurance.
Surgical abortions can cost between 100,000 yen and 200,000 yen.
Mifepristone has been at the centre of a high-profile US court battle in recent weeks. The supreme court has temporarily preserved access to the widely used abortion drug, freezing rulings by lower courts that would have banned or severely restricted its availability.
Campaigners in Japan are also pushing for better access to the morning-after pill.
Emergency contraception cannot be bought in Japan without a doctor’s approval. It is also the only medicine that must be taken in front of a pharmacist to stop it being sold on the black market.
synapdoche on April 29th, 2023 at 17:44 UTC »
An IRL friend was telling me that the government of Japan would soon be implementing draconian measures in order to forcibly increase the birth rate.
Just one more tally in the column of "Americans don't know shit about Japan".
lushfizz on April 29th, 2023 at 16:20 UTC »
I thought that was the Ubisoft logo at first glance
LadyOfMelancholy on April 29th, 2023 at 16:16 UTC »
Wait, they didn’t have access to abortion pills this whole time and their population is still collapsing? Goddamn Japanese people really do have no time for anything other than work.