Congressional Law Fails to Reach Female Genital Mutilation
The World Health Organization has spelled out the extraordinary harm and suffering that FGM causes. This includes pain so severe that it can cause shock and trauma; serious infections; urinary problems for life; scarring that makes urination, menstruation, intercourse, and childbirth forms of torture; inability to ever experience sexual pleasure; a fistula which leads to being ostracized and which requires surgery which may not be available; obstetrical complications; and to lifelong psychological post-traumatic stress disorder.
Whether FGM is understood to be a religious or a tribal custom, like polygamy, child marriage, normalized wife-and-daughter beating, incest, and human sacrifice (honor killing or femicide), it has no place in the United States.