낙태죄 헌법불합치결정에 따른 입법개선방향

If we took a research on the criminal abortion of Japanese law, we could recognize the 「Eugenic Protection Act」 which is considered to be the matrix of Korean 「Mother and Child Health Act」. There remains the illegal abortion in Japanese criminal law and it has not been reviewed on the constitutional perspective, so that it may well be a consequence of low weight on the japanese legal system to find out its legislative reform through the comparative legal study on the criminal abortion. However it is necessary to review the current issues and problems of artificial abortion in Japanese legal institutions because the rules on abortion between Korean law and japanese law look very similar at a glance, but they are different in detail. Especially, the “economic reason” is stipulated as the acceptable reasons for artificial abortion in the Japanese 「Eugenic Protection Act」 which is said to have been almost copied by the Korean 「Mother and Child Health Act」, but the “economic reason” is not stipulated in Korean law. According to unconstitutional decision of the constitutional court of Republic of Korea, it was pointed out as its grounds that the abortion conflict situation by various broad social and economic reasons which make it difficult to maintain pregnancy and give birth was not included at all. Considering this point, the comparative legal study on the Japanese legal system may be used as a reference in finding out the direction of legislation in a different sense from Anglo-American or European legislation because the “social and economic reasons” is prescribed and applied in Japan.