Human Rights, Biological Citizenship, and Reproductive Policy in Japan’s Leprosy Sanitaria

This presentation re-examines the reproductive policy within Japan’s national sanitaria. Through the analysis of patient writings, Susan Burns (Chicago) will argue that the that many leprosy patients were deeply concerned about their biological responsibility towards their offspring and thus embraced sterilization and abortion as offering reproductive choice, something unavailable to those outside the sanitaria until the postwar era.