ESASHI, Hokkaido--Prefectural officials are investigating a local facility for people with intellectual disabilities after learning that eight couples, each hoping to live together or marry, underwent sterilization procedures at the organization’s urging.

The operator of the group home, Asunaro Social Welfare Service Corp., has admitted to recommending powerful fertility control measures, such as vasectomies for men and birth control rings for women, to couples with disabilities for the past two and a half decades.

This practice continued even after Japan scrapped its eugenics law that permitted involuntary sterilization.

Critics charge that this shows the concept of eugenics is still deeply rooted in Japan, even though it was ruled unconstitutional long ago.

Hidetoshi Higuchi, the director of Asunaro Social Welfare Service, told a Dec. 19 news conference that his organization explained to the couples, with their parents present, what difficulties they would encounter raising a child, should they think about getting married or living together in the group home. 

Those difficulties include the prospect their child could be sent away to another welfare facility.

Higuchi said his organization suggests the birth control measures to the couples that decided not to have children, and that 16 people followed their fertility advice.

Higuchi said he believes it is his organization’s responsibility to candidly discuss with people who have disabilities what hurdles they will likely encounter in real life, although they respect their freedom to date whomever they choose.

“Recommending procedures to become sterile was made in that context and we have never forced these steps on them against their wishes,” he said.

Higuchi said undergoing a procedure to become sterile is not a condition for using their facilities.

“Parents can continue to live in the facility, even after the birth of a child. But our services do not cover the child,” he said. “We cannot just keep lining up nice words.”

Children under 18 are not eligible to live in a group home for people with intellectual disabilities.

If a couple at a group home has a child, then that child would be sent to another social welfare facility if the parents cannot raise the offspring on their own.

Most group homes are operated on the assumption that their occupants will not have children while living there.

Yoko Matsubara, an ethics professor at Ritsumeikan University, said this case shows that the concept of eugenics remains deeply entrenched in today’s society.

“What has been done at the Hokkaido facility reflects a thinking that one can ask people with disabilities to ‘transform’ their bodies,” she said. “Officials at the facility say that they ‘did not force, but recommended sterilization.’ But couples would have no choice but to accept the procedure if they find it extremely difficult to make a living after leaving their facility and few other group homes are available in the neighborhood.”

Under Japan’s now-defunct eugenics law, which took effect in 1948, thousands of people with disabilities were sterilized without their consent until 1996, when the law was revised to remove the forced-sterilization provisions and renamed the Maternal Health Law.

Under the current law, surgery to make a woman sterile is allowed to be performed if pregnancy or childbirth might endanger her life. Consent from the woman and her spouse, if she has one, must first be obtained before proceeding.

But surgery to make a woman sterile is not legally sanctioned--even if she gives her consent--if pregnancy and childbirth pose no threat to her life.

In Tokyo, health minister Katsunobu Kato said at a news conference on Dec. 20 the ministry will gather more information on the circumstances of these cases before it chooses how to respond.

"It would be inappropriate if the organization made sterilization a condition for allowing them to live in the group home," he said. 

Asunaro Social Welfare Service Corp. was founded in 1989 and operates more than 50 welfare facilities for people with disabilities and those with senile dementia in southern Hokkaido, with about 410 using its services.

(This article was written by Hiroaki Abe, Tomoe Ishikawa and Haruto Hiraoka.)