Female Genital Mutilation
By Julie Clawson
Recently, the American Academy of Pediatrics (AAP) issued a recommendation which essentially promotes female genital mutilation (FGM) and advocates for “federal and state laws [to] enable pediatricians to reach out to families by offering a ‘ritual nick’,” such as pricking or minor incisions of girls’ clitorises. The Policy Statement “Ritual Genital Cutting of Female Minors”, issued by the AAP on April 26, 2010, is on one hand intended to help protect young girls. The reasoning is that often families from certain cultural traditions will leave the country or find alternate sources to perform FGM on their daughters, so the AAP is suggesting that if doctors here perform a ritual prick or minor incision of a girl’s clitoris, it will prevent families from inflicting the harsher forms on their daughters.
This recommendation has of course been met with some outrage. FGM is illegal in the United States and a new law is currently being proposed to make it illegal to transport girls out of the U.S. for the purpose of FGM. While this is a cultural tradition for some, others see it as simply another form of violence against women. FGM is the removal of all or part of a woman’s genitalia for the purposes of controlling her sexuality and insuring she is a virgin until marriage. Women in cultures that practice FGM are often not accepted by their culture unless they have had it done to them. Advocates of women’s rights argue that women should be permitted to control their own bodies and be free to experience sexual pleasure as adults.
So it is shocking to many to hear the AAP’s recommendations. While the proposal is supposedly meant to protect young girls, it still sanctions the mentality that women’s sexuality must be controlled by men. The idea that doctor’s in America could do this to young children is abhorrent to those who fight to protect the voiceless.
Of course, this is only a recommendation from the AAP and may never become reality it raises some serious ethical questions. How do you react to this recommendation? Do you see this as protecting women or oppressing them?
