Congressional Law Fails to Reach Female Genital Mutilation

12/07/2018

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.

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