A conservative politician in Japan is backpedaling on farcical comments he made last week about making laws that would ban women over the age of 25 from ever getting married and force women over the age of 30 to remove their uteruses.
Naoki Hyakuta, leader of the Conservative Party of Japan, addressed the country's declining birthrate during a YouTube stream on Friday before offering a hypothetical idea, which he said he doesn't support, of women "having their uteruses removed when they are over 30," according to Kyodo News.
"Women would not be allowed to go to universities from 18," and "a law would not allow single women over 25 to ever get married," Hyakuta added.
He defended his theoretical proposal to another member of his party who interjected to tell Hyakuta his remarks were inappropriate, per Kyodo News.
"I was explaining about the time limitation (faced by women in giving birth) in a plain way," he said.
Following global backlash, he retracted his comments during an appearance on Sunday. He also tweeted that his comments were "undeniably something extremely harsh" and reiterated the idea was "science-fiction" and "something that should not happen," Kyodo News reported.
Originally published by Latin Times
