10 Scientific American, December 2019FORUM
COMMENTARY ON SCIENCE IN
THE NEWS FROM THE EXPERTSIllustration by Fahmida AzimQanta A. Ahmed is an academic physician at NYU Langone
and a visiting fellow at the Independent Women’s Forum.Legal Child
Abuse Must End
Female genital mutilation
continues in the U.S.
By Qanta A. AhmedIt was a failure to denounce a crime against hu man ity. In July,
Ani Zonn e veld, president of Muslims for Progressive Values,
asked Representative Ilhan Omar of Minnesota to make a state-
ment concerning women and girls victimized by female genital
mutilation or cutting (FGM/C). Instead of educating the audi-
ence and pledging to improve legal protections against it, Omar,
a Somali-American Muslim woman, pointed out that she had
spoken against the practice else-
where and excoriated Zonn e veld
for making the request simply be -
cause of Omar’s religion—ignor-
ing the fact that Zonn e veld is her-
self a follower of Islam.
As a female Muslim physician,
I find Omar’s response inexcus-
able. In May 2017 Omar, then a
state lawmaker, did vote for more
severe penalties for FGM/C, al-
though she expressed serious res-
ervations. That bill died in the
state senate. Omar has also co-
sponsored a resolution in Con-
gress to condemn the practice.
But the mutilations continue, as
does the pressure to accept them
as an act of cultural conformity.
This political inaction leaves at-
risk girls and women in America
without recourse to justice. The Centers for Disease Control and
Prevention notes that the number of such women—currently es-
timated as 513,000—has risen with increasing immigration.
The World Health Organization classifies FGM/C in four cate-
gories: clitoroidectomy, or excision of variable amounts of the cli-
toris and clitoral hood; excision consisting of partial or total re-
moval of the clitoris and labia; infibulation, or excision and repo-
sitioning of the internal and/or external labia to narrow or block
the vaginal opening, sometimes with suturing of the vulva, pre-
venting penile penetration and restricting the passage of urine
and menstrual blood; and all other forms of mutilation, includ-
ing cauterization.
FGM/C affects more than 200 million women and girls glob-
ally, mostly in Africa, the Middle East and Asia. In eight nations
the prevalence exceeds 80 percent. In Somalia, where FGM/C im-
pacts girls between four and 11 years of age, it reaches 95 percent.Sanitized as “female circumcision,” these procedures have
no positive impacts on health. FGM/C devastates women and
girls permanently. Not only can menstruation and sexual inter-
course become painful and traumatic, but victims also are left
with permanent genital deformity and may experience loss of li-
bido, delayed menarche, chronic pelvic infections, urinary tract
infections, fistulas that can cause urinary and fecal incontinence,
and sepsis, which can sometimes be lethal. Members of tribal
diaspora communities in the U.S. often return to sub-Saharan
Africa to brutalize their daughters over the summer vacation
season, known as the cutting season.
Muslim families are finding practitioners in the U.S. who are
willing to perform the procedures. In the case of Jumana Nagar-
wala, a Muslim woman who was the first American physician to
be federally charged for performing the procedure, two girls were
confirmed to have undergone FGM/C procedures in Michigan,
after being transported from Minnesota. In 2006 the first convic-
tion for FGM/C in the U.S. was
made when an Ethiopian immi-
grant was found guilty of perform-
ing the surgery on his daughter in
the state of Georgia.
Data on FGM/C in the U.S. are
lacking, but an anecdotal obser-
vation from the Hennepin Coun-
ty Medical Center in Minneapolis
estimated that type III FGM/C is
seen in 99 percent of Somali wo-
men. The American Medical As-
sociation has classified it as child
abuse. And Minnesota law on
FGM/C renders the practice a fel-
ony but fails to hold parents ac-
countable for aiding and abetting
the crime and for the endanger-
ment of a child, although such
charges can be brought under oth-
er state laws. During the Obama
administration, the U.S. criminalized the transport of minors for
FGM/C. Still, in much of the U.S., legislation needs to be aug-
mented: Only 10 states have mandatory-reporting laws specifi-
cally for FGM/C. Only 35 make FGM/C a felony for practitioners,
and several of those laws fail to address the role of guardians or
the possibility of cultural defenses and “vacation cutting.”
The Independent Women’s Forum (IWF) is petitioning for
FGM/C to be included in the federal Violence Against Women Act
(VAWA). The act has been reauthorized three times, and IWF right-
ly argues that FGM/C is violence against women (and girls) and
must be part of more robust and comprehensive VAWA legislation.
Silence here is never an option.JOIN THE CONVERSATION ONLINE
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