The limits of women's choices in Japan: Pronatalism, autonomy, and narratives of sexual risk in the era of the pill

Abstract The continued assault on women's reproductive freedoms has dampened the critique of the liberal feminist logics of autonomy in reproductive rights activism. This article centers on the Pill, a longtime symbol of women's empowerment, to reorient debates about individual choice. While critical work has recognized the stratified nature of birth control, the literature adheres to a dialectic of difference in which the Pill extends the autonomy of privileged women while oppressing structurally marginalized women. Breaking this dualism, this article explores the Pill's uptake among otherwise privileged, middle‐class women in contemporary Japan, where the Pill's offer of autonomy introduces new medical, sexual, and social risks that shape women's resistance to making reproduction a matter of individual responsibility and control. By examining the narratives of 48 pill users in Tokyo, I show how, instead of autonomy, women ask for the sharing of reproductive risk and responsibility through contraceptive practices that promote relational forms of care. Situating women's stories against the backdrop of pronatalism and everyday gender inequality in Japan, I show how the multiple layers of structural injustice that middle‐class women navigate make it impossible to sustain a fantasy that one can be empowered by a technology that offers individual choice.