New lifestyles necessitated by the pandemic, such as more time spent at home, are feared to have increased the number of unwanted pregnancies and sexual assaults. In response to this situation, a health ministry team will conduct its first nationwide survey of abortion practices within this fiscal year, according to sources.
Counseling services for pregnant women nationwide have seen a sharp increase in consultations since April -- especially among women in their 10s and 20s -- and the Health, Labor and Welfare Ministry team will seek the cooperation of medical institutions and support groups to collect data and compare the situations before and after the spread of the novel coronavirus.
-- Five-fold increase
In April, Chiisana Inochi no Door (door for little lives), a consultation center for pregnant women that is based at a midwife clinic in Kobe, received the following message via the LINE free communication app.
"I was forced to quit my part-time job due to the spread of the coronavirus. A man who approached me on the street asked me, 'Do you want to earn some money?' So, I had sex with him. I think I might have got pregnant."
The consultation center opened in September 2018 and has counseled about 1,000 people over two years. According to the center, it had received consultations from about 30 people per month, but the number jumped to 89 in April, when a state of emergency was declared nationwide.
Since then the number has kept increasing to 120 in May, 148 in June and 152 in July, reaching five times the level in the pre-pandemic period.
Of these cases, 70% were consultations from teenagers. The center's representative director said, "In addition to reduced income among the younger generations, there are also noticeable signs that they're spending more time indoors due to self-restraint from going out and school closures."
The Tokyo metropolitan government's pregnancy consultation hotline received 365 inquires in April, an increase of about 20% over the same month last year. Of these, the number of consultations by people in their 20s to 30s rose from 224 to 300.
In April, the United Nations Population Fund noted that fears of viral infections and restrictions on going out can lead to unexpected pregnancies when women do not go to health care facilities. Skipping clinic visits could lead to delays in the prescription of emergency contraception and check-ups.
Sakumi Akao, director of the Japan Crisis Pregnancy Hotline Network, a Tokyo-based general incorporated association comprising operators of counseling services, said: "Women who are poor or isolated may be forced into an even worse situation by the coronavirus pandemic. I want them to use consulting services without hesitation."
-- Doctors' cooperation
Under the Maternal Health Law, abortion procedures must be performed by designated physicians (about 7,200 doctors nationwide) who have been screened by prefectural medical associations. The patient and their spouse must also consent to the procedure.
The health ministry releases the number of abortion procedures performed across the country once a year, but it takes time to compile the data based on reports from prefectures. The most recent data was 161,741 in fiscal 2018. The report does not examine how many of these pregnancies were considered unwanted.
With the help of the Japan Association of Obstetricians and Gynecologists, a national organization of specialists, the ministry's team will hand out questionnaires directly to doctors and medical workers to find out whether any of the abortions were made for such reasons as a drop in income or dismissal from a job in response to governmental requests to suspend business activities. Another question will be whether contraception was used.
The team will compare the results with those of the same period last year and analyze within this fiscal year whether there have been any changes. It will also call for the cooperation of consultation services set up by local governments and the private sector, as well as centers to support victims of sexual crimes that are located in each prefecture, so as to analyze the number and content of consultations to determine trends by age.
Team representative Tomoko Adachi, the executive director of the gynecologists association, said: "Even before the spread of the coronavirus, a higher percentage of young people tended to choose abortion, and inadequate sex education has been an issue.
"We want to analyze the changes in the situation of pregnant women and women in general as a result of the self-restraint necessitated by the coronavirus, and utilize this study in our efforts to reduce the number of unexpected pregnancies."
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