The Justice Ministry is ready to shift into full gear by submitting a bill revising a contentious legal provision for determining paternity that has shaped Japanese families for more than a century.

That comes after an advisory panel effectively endorsed the bill, which is aimed at preventing babies from going undocumented.

But while lawmakers are quiet on the matter now, ministry officials worry it could quickly turn into a political football over traditional values, so they plan to proceed cautiously to keep the planned legislation alive.

They anticipate pushback from staunch conservatives within the ruling Liberal Democratic Party.

The ministry plans to submit the legislation during the current Diet session.

The Legislative Council, an advisory panel to the justice minister, officially recommended on Feb. 14 that the 1898 Civil Law be amended to include an exception to the presumed paternity clause.

The clause sets out that a child born within 300 days of the mother’s divorce is presumed to be fathered by her former spouse--regardless of blood relations between the father and the child.

It was originally created to solidify the legal status of newborns by swiftly recognizing paternal relations without relying on genetic relations.

But it creates a problem for women who have suffered from domestic abuse who do not wish to have their new child registered under their abusive husband's name.

The revision bill would change the law so the child gets recognized as the offspring of the mother and her new marriage partner after her remarriage, even if the child was born within 300 days of her divorce from her former spouse.

This is not the first time the issue has come up for consideration.

Momentum for changing the presumed paternity provision started to grow around 2007 after a flurry of reports revealed that many women who gave birth to a child within 300 days after getting divorced had opted out of registering their babies.

Children left off the local family register face enormous difficulties in their daily lives when it comes to matters such as registering their marriage, obtaining a driver’s license and opening a bank account.

The LDP and its junior coalition partner, Komeito, set up a task force at the time to draft special legislation that would sort out the question of children left off the family register.

The legislation was meant to recognize the biological father of a child through DNA testing, even if the child was born within 300 days from the mother’s divorce.

But some conservative LDP lawmakers fiercely opposed the effort, arguing it “will facilitate extramarital affairs.”

Others called for the need to “consider the questions of chastity and sexual morality” in compiling the bill.

Shinzo Abe, who was prime minister at the time, signaled reluctance over legislation that in his view could erode the traditional view of marriage.

“There are diverse opinions about the issue that is at the heart of the marriage system,” he said. “We should have more debate about the subject.”

As a result, the task force was forced to abandon submitting the bill to the Diet in the final hours.

Little discussion took place over the issue while Abe remained in power from late 2012 to 2020 in his second term as prime minister.

But after the Justice Ministry launched a fact-finding investigation into undocumented people and implemented support programs for them, it became increasingly convinced of the urgency of overhauling the presumed paternity provision.

A subcommittee with the Legislative Council has been discussing the proposal to amend it since July 2019.

So far, no opposition has been voiced from lawmakers about the planned revision bill, according to ministry officials.

But ranking ministry officials remain cautious about whether the epoch-making revision will finally become a reality, given what occurred during Abe’s first term.

“We are still at the stage where legal experts have made their recommendation to the justice minister,” one of the officials said. “Opposition to the amendment will likely become louder as moves to revise the law shift into high gear.”

Another senior official said the ministry cannot afford to be optimistic about the course of the revision bill, referring to another high-profile recommendation by the Legislative Council.

As far back as 1996, the council urged the justice minister to amend the law to allow married couples to choose between sharing one surname or using separate ones. But that has yet to materialize.

“We could end up repeating that unless we build a consensus (in favor of the revision) by working in a circumspect and painstaking way,” the official said.