JAPAN: The Boom h Over

The Japanese Ministry of Welfare reported last week that because of legalized abortion, Japan's birth rate has dropped below that of 1948. Few Americans had realized that the Diet had passed an abortion law last year.* The law provided that abortion was permitted 1) in families with hereditary insanity or leprosy, 2) whenever the child endangered the life of the mother, 3) in families too poor to feed and clothe the new offspring.

* In 1936 Soviet Russia repealed its 1920 law legalizing abortion. Abortion is illegal in all Western countries, and generally throughout Asia.

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