Tokyo, Japan—Japan’s top court ruled on Wednesday that a defunct eugenics law under which thousands of people were forcibly sterilized between 1948 and 1996 was unconstitutional, local media reported.
The law allowed doctors to sterilize people with inheritable intellectual disabilities to “prevent the generation of poor quality descendants.” “I’ve spent an agonizing 66 years because of the government surgery. I want my life back that I was robbed of,” victim Saburo Kita, who uses a pseudonym, said before Wednesday’s ruling.
That dark history was thrust back under the spotlight in 2018 when a woman in her 60s sued the government over a procedure she had undergone at age 15, opening the floodgates for similar lawsuits. Regional courts have mostly agreed in recent years that the eugenics law constituted a violation of Japan’s constitution.