The abortion pill is to become available in Japan for the first time after the Japanese Welcome to Ministry of Health, Labour and Welfare approved the drug used to terminate early stage pregnancy.
Abortion is legal in Japan up to 22 weeks, but consent is usually required from a spouse or partner, and until now a surgical procedure had been the only option.
The ministry said in a notification to healthcare officials on Friday that it had approved the drug made by British pharmaceutical company Linepharma.
File photo: AFP
The drugmaker filed its product, a two-step treatment of mifepristone and misoprostol, for approval in Japan in December 2021.
Similar medication is available in many countries, including France, which first approved the abortion pill in 1988, and the US, where it has been available since 2000.
The approval of the pill to end pregnancies up to nine weeks follows a ministry panel endorsement, which was postponed for a month as thousands of public opinions were submitted.
Public broadcaster NHK said the total cost of the abortion pill and a medical consultation would be about ￥100,000 (US$734). Abortions are not covered by public health insurance.
Surgical abortions can cost about ￥100,000 to ￥200,000.
Mifepristone has been at the center of a high-profile US court battle over the past few weeks.
The US Supreme Court has temporarily preserved access to the widely used abortion drug, freezing rulings by lower courts that would have banned or severely restricted its availability.
Campaigners in Japan are also pushing for better access to the morning-after pill, which prevents pregnancy.
Emergency contraception cannot be bought in Japan without a doctor’s approval. It is also the only medicine that must be taken in front of a pharmacist to stop it from being sold on the black market.
STEPPING UP: Diminished US polar science presence mean opportunities for the UK and other countries, although China or Russia might also fill that gap, a researcher said The UK’s flagship polar research vessel is to head to Antarctica next week to help advance dozens of climate change-linked science projects, as Western nations spearhead studies there while the US withdraws. The RRS Sir David Attenborough, a state-of-the-art ship named after the renowned British naturalist, would aid research on everything from “hunting underwater tsunamis” to tracking glacier melt and whale populations. Operated by the British Antarctic Survey (BAS), the country’s polar research institute, the 15,000-tonne icebreaker — boasting a helipad, and various laboratories and gadgetry — is pivotal to the UK’s efforts to assess climate change’s impact there. “The saying goes
Floods on Sunday trapped people in vehicles and homes in Spain as torrential rain drenched the northeastern Catalonia region, a day after downpours unleashed travel chaos on the Mediterranean island of Ibiza. Local media shared videos of roaring torrents of brown water tearing through streets and submerging vehicles. National weather agency AEMET decreed the highest red alert in the province of Tarragona, warning of 180mm of rain in 12 hours in the Ebro River delta. Catalan fire service spokesman Oriol Corbella told reporters people had been caught by surprise, with people trapped “inside vehicles, in buildings, on ground floors.” Santa Barbara Mayor Josep Lluis
Police in China detained dozens of pastors of one of its largest underground churches over the weekend, a church spokesperson and relatives said, in the biggest crackdown on Christians since 2018. The detentions, which come amid renewed China-US tensions after Beijing dramatically expanded rare earth export controls last week, drew condemnation from US Secretary of State Marco Rubio, who on Sunday called for the immediate release of the pastors. Pastor Jin Mingri (金明日), founder of Zion Church, an unofficial “house church” not sanctioned by the Chinese government, was detained at his home in the southern city of Beihai on Friday evening, said
SANCTIONS: Congolese Minister of Foreign Affairs Therese Kayikwamba Wagner called on the EU to tighten sanctions against Rwanda during an event in Brussels The Democratic Republic of the Congo (DR Congo) has accused the EU of “an obvious double standard” for maintaining a minerals deal with Rwanda to supply Europe’s high-tech industries when it deployed a far-wider sanctions regime in response to the war in Ukraine. Congolese Minister of Foreign Affairs Therese Kayikwamba Wagner urged the EU to levy much stronger sanctions against Rwanda, which has fueled the conflict in the eastern DR Congo, describing the bloc’s response to breaches of the DR Congo’s territory as “very timid.” Referencing the EU’s response to Russia’s invasion of Ukraine, she said: “It is an obvious double standard
RSS