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This is one of the
thousands of suburban health clinics for women, around Japan.
Today 36 year old Masaaki Okabe and his wife Sanae, 35, are
having their first child.
(mother sweating/father comforting)
This is what their doctor Hirofumi Chikuni,
LIKES to do...deliver babies.
(Chikuni chatting)
Dr Chikuni's small clinic is a thriving business...he
delivers around 40 babies a month and sees as many as 90 outpatients a day.
“Congratulations” Have a look at your baby”(holds up child)
When baby Sakiko finally makes her entrance, husband,
grandparents, staff, even the foreign tv crew, are included in the
celebrations.
(husband and I toasting beers) “Congratulations”
But in between babies and beers – Doctor Chikuni has a very
lucrative sideline at his clinic.
*** A big slice of his income, comes from abortions - abortions
performed as a method of birth control on young women - whom he then sends
away unable to prescribe them a safe contraceptive.
(baby cries...)
(morning, knocking on the door) Dr Chikuni is off to work around
8am... though he's 'on the job' already.
(Chikuni on car-phone) TC 6:44 Whatʼs happening with the
woman who is due for her sixth delivery? No labour pains yet."
"I am very busy. I have expensive hobby, eh? So I must work
hard.' (laughs)
His expensive hobby is travelling the world singing opera,
different to that his medical colleagues ...
Chikuni.
21:48 "Every doctor training golf every day, eh, And very expensive I
think.
Every doctor? Every doctor.
Every doctor's position in a hospital is decided on the golf course.
(laughs).
(arrive at work)
He arrives to an already long queue.
(grab Chikuni) “The peak age group of the women having abortions
is around the early twenties ... there are a few 14 to 15 year olds, then the
number starts to increase from 18 to 19 years old.
In the waiting room I met 19 year old Yoshie who is 7 weeks
pregnant, and here to have an abortion.
Yoshie agreed to let us film the procedure as long as we didn't
reveal her real identity.
(nurse telling her where/how to change) "Please change your
clothes and put them into the bag."
(Dr Chikuni scrubbing up)
An abortion in Japan is expensive...anything between one
thousand and two thousand dollars ... and it's not refundable on the national
health system.
Dr Chikuni told me of young girls taking a collection at school
amongst friends to help pay for an abortion.
Chikuni TC 21:31 My clinic has never padded claims on the
National Health Insurance system - so **IN:
Our income from abortions is worth a lot. With the income from abortions my
clinic can survive. I think it's the same situation for others. If the number
of abortions decreased, they'd be hurt financially.
(starting procedure)
Doctor Chikuni prides himself on the care he says he takes in performing abortions. he does around 700 a
year.
All the same, there's no licensed anaethestist present to administer
the general anaesthetic. unlike other countries it's not a requirement to
have one or abortions in Japan.
(grab Chikuni) TC 54:39 "She's moving, give her another
2cc.”
Chikuni 16:35 "Fundamentally, I think abortion is not a
good thing. I think it can be a dangerous operation." (edit) 17:25 The
most frightening thing is, even when there's an accident during an abortion
operation, it won't be brought out into the open in Japan. That's the biggest
concern.
(edit) Parents are afraid of letting people know their daughter
is pregnant ... when an accident happens, parents will usually come to the
doctor and ask him to report the death as a rupture of the appendix or
something.
Dr Chikuni performs a Curettage and then a vacuum suction on
Yoshie.
It goes smoothly, taking slightly longer than the 5 minutes he
usually takes to finish an abortion.
Japanese health authorities claim around 330 thousand abortions
are done in Japan each year - but Doctor Chikuni tells me it
could easily be double that.
(Chikuni) I know of others who understate numbers for tax
purposes.
Still
groggy from the procedure, Yoshie told me seven of her
friends have had ten abortions between them.
(Yoshie) 7:30 Before the operation I thought having an
abortion would be easy. But I had to undergo a general anaesthetic in
theatre. An abortion really is a serious procedure. I didn't like it and my
body had a hard time too. I never want to have such a bitter experience
again.
Chikuni: TC 27:12 Do you know how you got
pregnant?
I didn't use any contraceptive.
You didn't use anything? Not even a condom?
No.
When a low dose contraceptive pill becomes
available, will you use it?
If everybody else does, I will. **New Out
(60's pix). In the sixites elsewhere in the world,
the pill revolutionised women's freedom to choose when or if to have a
family.
But not in Japan...reports of the negative
side-effect of early high dose pills, were used by Japanese health
authorities as an excuse not to approve it.
(transition to pix today)
More than thirty years later, health authorities
have now legalised a high dose pill but only for treating menstrual problems.
Japanese women are still refused access to a safer
low dose pill, universally used in most developed countries
As a result, up to 300 thousand Japanese women now use this
higher dose pill as a contraceptive.
Though the medical hierarchy in Japan now accepts
world health standards on the pill's safety – health authorities have never
promoted it to Japanese women.
(grab night-time Shibuya, Ashida-san) 39:29 They
know about condoms and they've heard about the pill – and they think the pill
is pretty scary. On what basis? Their intuition. Japanese always believe the
pill is unnatural and shouldn't be good for women's bodies.
Writer and activist Midori Ashida has heard every
excuse Japan's Health Ministry can manufacture for not approving the pill.
45:21 Many people still believe the pill will make
women promiscuous, yeah. (laughs)
She heads a determined corp of professional women
now lobbying the Japanese Government to introduce the low dose pill.
43:28 If the pill is available then it's the first
effective contraceptive Japanese women have – then if they learn to use it
properly then, they'll learn to control their own bodies and their own life
or fate.
(edit Ashida) 42:06 Many Japanese men regard free Women as
dangerous... Scary.
(PTC) THE SHEER HYPOCRISY OF
JAPANESE AUTHORITIES IS STAGGERING TO SAY THE LEAST. ON ONE HAND THEY SAY
IT'S NOT IN THE BEST INTERESTS OF WOMEN TO GIVE THEM A SAFE CON'CEPTIVE PILL
BUT AUTHORITIES HERE READILY ALLOW A WHOLE HOST OF SERVICES AND BEHAVIOURS
THAT ARE MOST DEFINITELY NOT IN THE BEST INTERESTS OF J' WOMEN.
(club scene in Roppongi) This is the scene
on any given night of the week at this No Pan' Cabacura club in
Tokyo.
This club is called the Priory ... the main attraction? Young
girls in School uniform.
We
were allowed to film here on the basis we found a handful of drinkers who
were prepared to be filmed and paid the bill.
(nat Sot) girls reaching up for drinks
The system is simple. Cabacura stand for Cabaret club ... and
the no pan ... means no panties.
It openly caters to the appetite of Japanese men for young
girls, an appetite that has been steadily growing since the Aids Scare
encouraged men here to look for younger,
safer
flesh.
(i/v with girl serving) 23:10 Before this I was an ordinary
office clerk. (edit) 24:13 At first I felt really ashamed, I didn't like my
skirt being lifted. After three days or so, I got used to it.
It's the type of club you can find in any pornographic magazine
- to be bought on Open display at your regular convenience store.
(PTC) You can virtually satisfy any whim you've
got – there's even a club here that allows a man to fulfil his fantasy of
molesting a woman on the train. The interior of the club is designed like a
train carriage and on the inside is a 'resisting' woman, to be molested.
(Ashida-san) 13:22 On the surface it's so clean
and neat and safe but underneath there are much (sic) hypocrisies going on.
(pharmaceutical co's)
(PTC Health Ministry) THIS IS THE ALL POWERFUL
HEALTH MINISTRY OF JAPAN WHERE I'VE HAD TWO HOURS OF BRIEFINGS WITH THE MAIN
MINISTRY OFFICIAL RESPONSIBLE FOOR PROCESSING APPROVAL FOR THE CONTRACEPTIVE
PILL/ NOT SURPRISINGLY, HE'S HIDING BEHIND HIS MINISTRY'S WALLS, DESCRIBING
THE PILL AS TOO CONTROVERSIAL AN ISSUE FOR HIM OR ANYONE ELSE IN HIS MINISTRY
TO APPEAR ON CAMERA...
OFF CAMERA, HE'S TOLD ME, THE PILL IS STILL BOGGED
DOWN IN BUREAUCRATIC PROCESSES..HE CAN'T SAY WHEN OR IF THE PILL WILL EVER BE
APPROVED. HE JUSTIFIED THE DELAYS BY SAYING JAPANESE WOMEN THEMSELVES DON'T
WANT THE PILL – SO WHILE THERE'S NO HURRY. WHAT HE HASN'T GIVEN ME IS ONE
GOOD, SOLID REASON WHY THE BAN HAS NOT BEEN LIFTED.
(music/statues at temple)
This is the side of this whole debate the health
Ministry ignores.
Every one of these statues represents a life,
lost.
They're replicas of Jizo-Sama ... the guardian of dead children
or Omizuko ... the Water-baby who represents a foetus.
Japanese women buy them at temples like this to placate the spirits of their foetus... lost through
miscarriage or more
commonly, abortion.
Tens of thousands of these statues have been placed at this one
temple alone. So many, that every two years the buddhist priests burn the
effigies to make room for new ones.
(nat sot Megumi at temple praying)
21 year old Megumi had an abortion less than three weeks ago at
Dr Chikuni's clinic.
She's at the temple with her boyfriend, Hitoshi, today to buy
their statue.
(nat Sot/buying statue) I'd like to buy a statue for 8 000 yen.
Please write down your name here. (woman writes 'Water Baby") (edit) We
won't know where it will be placed will we?
It will be placed
somewhere near the Manju Pond.
With three years of nursing training behind her - Megumi was due to sit her final exams when she fell
pregnant.
Megumi. My actions were so selfish. Getting
pregnant was my own fault. It was for my own convenience that I had an
abortion...I feel responsible and guilt for killing the tiny life of my unborn
baby.
With no followup counselling...the temple is her
only outlet for grief.
(Megumi) I get angry so easily now, I've felt so
emotionally unstable and I cry so easily.
(Hi-8 pix Megum going to hospital)
Megumi did pass her nursing exams, but even today,
her first day in her new job at a prestigious nursing hospital in Tokyo,
she's carrying nagging doubts.
(thought-track) “I chose this career path, to
become a professional nurse and I'll push myself hard to achieve it. But the
fact that I aborted my baby for my own sake, will probably remain in my heart
forever.
(crying babies/birthday party)
Motherhood is a celebrated condition in Japan...
Each month, our opera-loving Doctor
Chikuni...celebrates the first birthday of his smallest clients...
(Dr Chikuni singing “Mamma”)
With Japan's population side fast declining –
authorities are urging Japanese women to have more babies.
And the fact is, many Japanese women DO go through
with unplanned pregnancies.
But by refusing them a more reliable contraceptive...one
used by ninety million women worldwide – they are, unashamedly forcing many
Japanese women into abortions.
(Chikuni) Doctors don't really support the low
dose pill. If it were legalised, they'd offer it, but I think the present
financial system makes them reluctant to really promote sales of the pill
when it would mean a decrease in the number of abortions.
It's hard to escape the conclusion: Japan's health
authorities are helping protect a lucrative business for Japanese doctors –
one which readily ignores the emotional, physical and financial burdens
imposed on Japanese women.
(up nat sot singing “Mamma” dissolve out)
ENDS....
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