This is controversial any way you look at it. The American Academy of Pediatrics is suggesting that doctors in the United States be allowed to perform a ceremonial “nick” or pinprick on girls whose families are from countries where female circumcision is practiced, in hopes that the families will not then send the girls overseas for the more severe practice.
Current federal law prohibits any nonmedical procedure on the genitals of any girl in the United States. The prohibition apparently has driven some Asian and African families overseas, where female circumcision – also called genital mutilation – is practiced.
From the New York Times:
“It might be more effective if federal and state laws enabled pediatricians to reach out to families by offering a ritual nick as a possible compromise to avoid greater harm,” the group said.
But some opponents of female genital mutilation, or F.G.M., denounced the statement.
“I am sure the academy had only good intentions, but what their recommendation has done is only create confusion about whether F.G.M. is acceptable in any form, and it is the wrong step forward on how best to protect young women and girls,” said Representative Joseph Crowley, Democrat of New York, who recently introduced a bill to toughen federal law by making it a crime to take a girl overseas to be circumcised. “F.G.M. serves no medical purpose, and it is rightfully banned in the U.S.”
Georganne Chapin, executive director of an advocacy group called Intact America, said she was “astonished that a group of intelligent people did not see the utter slippery slope that we put physicians on” with the new policy statement. “How much blood will parents be satisfied with?”
She added: “There are countries in the world that allow wife beating, slavery and child abuse, but we don’t allow people to practice those customs in this country. We don’t let people have slavery a little bit because they’re going to do it anyway, or beat their wives a little bit because they’re going to do it anyway.”
The issue is heating up. From a column in the British guardian.uk:
“The AAP's statement would lead to greater harm to girls in the U.S. by institutionalizing what it sees as less severe forms of FGM. WHO and Unicef have cautioned governments against medicalisation of all forms of FGM including pricking and piercing because it "tends to obscure its human rights aspect and could hinder the development of long-term solutions for ending the practice". The statement comes at a time when the U.S. legislature is seeking to close a loophole in its federal anti-FGM legislation, making it illegal for parents to take girls out of the U.S. for FGM and thus preventing more severe forms of FGM.
“But most importantly, the statement completely fails to recognize that human rights standards are absolute and not to be compromised upon in the name of possible harm reduction. The principle behind safeguarding human rights is harm elimination. The statement flies in the face of all international and regional deliberations on the issue, which have concluded that any medically unnecessary procedure to alter female genitalia constitutes a human rights violation and therefore must not be tolerated.”
And from a commentary in U.S. News & World Report:
“Believe it or not, the American Academy of Pediatrics (AAP) thinks it's OK for immigrant parents to subject their daughters to a mild form of female genital mutilation (FGM). This is more evidence our nation has gone mad over immigration and is allowing immigrants to commit all manner of crimes that would be illegal if performed by a native-born citizen.”
And:
“Genital mutilation is illegal in the United States, and for good reason. But we're so overly sympathetic to Asian and African cultures that still practice mutilation that we don't want to "offend" them by making their followers adhere to the same laws the rest of us here must abide by.”
What are your thoughts?
The New York Times story:
http://www.nytimes.com/2010/05/07/health/policy/07cuts.html
The guardian.uk column:
http://www.guardian.co.uk/commentisfree/2010/may/11/female-genital-mutilation-us-nicking
The U.S. News & World Report commentary:
http://www.usnews.com/opinion/blogs/erbe/2010/05/11/us-doctors-wrong-on-female-genital-mutilation-among-immigrants.html