The bomb uners a gripping true story of espionage at the core of the British

American Atomic Research programmes. Find out more in season two of the

bomb, a podcast from the BBC World Service, available now.

Hello and thank you for downloading the BBC Witness History podcast from the

World Service. This week we're going to bring you stories about women's reproductive

rights around the world. This follows the U.S. Supreme Court's ruling on

Roe vs Wade which removes the constitutional rights of abortion in America. The

contraceptive pill was first approved for use in the U.S. in 1960. It wasn't until

1999 that women in Japan were allowed to take oral contraceptives. In 2020, Rebecca

Kesby spoke to politician Yuriko Madoka who fought for the right for Japanese

women to take the pill.

I am the sort of person that the more resistance I face, the more motivated I am.

Yuriko Madoka is a politician who served in the upper house of the Japanese

parliament between 1993 and 2010. As one of the few women in politics at the time,

she made a point of speaking up for women's rights, including the right to

take the contraceptive pill.

The reason I started pushing for the legalization of the pill was because, before I became

an MP, I used to give a glass for women called the Smiley Divorce Glass.

I wasn't a professional counselor or anything. I was just a journalist, but I

volunteered to help people who were divorcing because I'd been through it myself.

We had a help line that people could phone to, and thousands of women got in touch

when they talked about what had gone wrong in their marriages. A lot of them talked about

...