The Japanese Government promulgated an Eugenic Protection Law in July 1948 which has caused the number of induced abortions to increase greatly. Even if only the approved abortions are considered, 246,104 abortions were reported in 1949; 489,111 in 1950; 638,350 in 1951; and 805,542 in 1952. The recent figures for all abortions are estimated to be more nearly one million, several hundred thousand. Because of the spread of this practice, conceptive education has begun in 1951 in the hope of lowering the abortion rate. The present study covers data collected from 5000 families in each of 3 geographic groups, large cities, medium sized cities and rural areas. In all cases the women in the family had accepted approval of the local Eugenic Protection Committee for their first induced abortion, under the clause which permitted induced abortion when "pregnancy or delivery might markedly injure the health of the mother because of her physical or financial position." The average number of induced abortions per women was: large cities 1.4; medium-sized cities 1.3 and rural areas 1.2. The greatest number of women having abortions fell into the 30-35 year old age group which made up 28.1% of all women questioned; 76.9% of all the women were between 25 and 39 years of age. 38% of these women had 2 or fewer children while 29.1% of the women had 5 or more children. The occurrence of a male child in the family had no bearing on motivation toward family-size control. Of the 1382 families surveyed 679 or 49.1% of all women became pregnant again after an abortion. Of this group, 43.3% became pregnant within 6 months of the first operation.