Report: End ‘demonization’ of female genital mutilation
From the Telegraph, CBC Canada and WND
At least 200 million women and girls worldwide have been subjected to female genital mutilation (FGM), but a new study claims the barbaric practice could be quelled by the introduction of “vulvar nicks.”
The controversial paper suggests that making small incisions in female genitals would be a suitable ‘compromise’ that wouldn’t cause severe damage to recipients, and could stop the procedure from being forced underground.
Dr Kavita Shah Arora, one of the authors of the study, explained that this conclusion had arisen out of a “pragmatic” need to address FGM.
The practice, common across the Mideast and Africa, is outlawed in Europe, but a new report authored by gynecologists Drs. Kavita Shah Arora and Allan J. Jacobs, and published in the Journal of Medical Ethics, calls on the West to “adopt a more nuanced position that acknowledges a wide spectrum of procedures that alter female genitalia.”
Arora of the Department of Bioethics, Case Western Reserve University, and Jacobs, professor of Obstetrics and Gynecology and Associate Faculty in Bioethics, Stony Brook University, argue milder forms of female genital mutilation – FGM – should be classified alongside male circumcision, vaginal cosmetic surgery and breast implants to prevent it being “demonized.” Changing the way the procedure is defined and viewed can protect young women from more severe forms of cutting, they said.
In keeping with their compromise between Western and Shariah law, the authors propose changing the name of the Muslim practice from FGM to FGA – female genital alteration,
“We are not arguing that any procedure on the female genitalia is desirable,” they said. “Rather, we only argue that certain procedures ought to be tolerated by liberal societies.”
Changing the name, they said, reflects variations in the procedure and risks, while minimizing “demonization” of a widespread cultural and religious practice.
“In order to better protect female children from the serious and long-term harms of some types of non-therapeutic FGA, we must adopt a more nuanced position that acknowledges a wide spectrum of procedures that alter female genitalia,” they wrote.
From an interview in Canada
…Your paper says that banning most minor forms is culturally insensitive supremacist and discriminatory toward women, how so?
DR. ALLAN JACOBS: It’s culturally insensitive in that if these things are important to people then we’re telling them that they’re wrong, that they’re a criminal. . . if the culture is strange, if the culture is more exotic, if the culture is perhaps one that a lot of people don’t like, than even the most minor procedures such as the vulvar nick, are criminal and that sounds discriminatory.
A focus on stopping those who perform it, rather than coming up with alternative means of cutting girls’ genitals, would be a real solution.