Gross Mutilation Is Not Like Male Circumcision At All

Courage is needed by immigrant mothers from Africa and Asia to prevent their young daughters from being cut in female genital mutilation. Courage is what they must find to stop this maiming. According to a March 4th article, who's affected? Two million girls each year. One hundred thirty million women worldwide, in Minnesota, here.

Good for Selamawit Yohannes and Purna Kumaria Gurung, authors who are educating. This cutting, not endorsed by Islam, is too gross a violation against the female child's body and soul to term simple "female circumcision."

It is unlike male circumcision, which does not cause lifelong psychological scars and serious health problems. No, this cutting—clitoridectomy or infibulation—inhibits urination and menses across a lifetime, heightens the distress of menstruation and childbirth, causes kidney and bladder diseases, and damages a woman's ability to have or enjoy sexual intercourse. The procedure is done in unsterile conditions, without anesthesia, by the medically untrained, to guarantee virginity.

Can you imagine a father allowing this to befall a son? One of the people quoted said that the issue's discussion isn't intended to interfere with another culture's practices. That is exactly what must be done, when practices harm people.

Originally published in the Saint Paul Pioneer Press, Opinion, April 7, 1999.