Nolan writes:
“. . . .
FGM has been a crime in America since 1996. Federal law provides that, “whoever knowingly circumcises, excises, or infibulates the whole or any part of the labia majora or labia minora or clitoris of another person who has not attained the age of 18 years shall be fined under this title or imprisoned not more than 5 years, or both.”
The first federal FGM prosecution, however, was not filed until 2017, when two Michigan doctors and the wife of one of the doctors were charged with performing FGM on two seven-year-old girls.
FGM is a crime under state law in 26 states, but I was not able to find examples of state prosecutions. Attempts to make it a crime in the remaining 24 states have met resistance. It can be difficult to separateattempts to end FGM from claims of Islamophobia.
In Maine, a Republican bill to criminalize FGM failed to pass in 2017 in part because FGM had been used in Maine to demonize immigrants and refugees from predominantly Muslim countries in Africa. It would have made FGM a Class A crime, which is punishable by up to 30 years in prison and a fine of as much as $50,000.
Maine has a population of approximately 12,000 people from Somalia, an officially Islamic country, and UNICEF estimates that 98 percent of the females in Somalia have had FGM.
But a survey of immigrant communities in Maine indicates that they recognize the need for such a law. More than 70 percent of participants said that FGM is harmful.
Political correctness also is an issue. The New York Times would not use the term “Female Genital Mutilation” in its article about the Michigan doctors, except in a quote. The Times called the offense, “genital cutting,” despite the fact that the prosecution was based on a federal criminal provision entitled, “Female genital mutilation.”
According to Celia Dugger, the Times’ Health and Science editor, “genital cutting” was a “less culturally loaded” term than “FGM.”
Ayaan Hirsi Ali, a woman’s rights activist, has said, “It is one thing to respect other cultures and religions, and quite another to turn a blind eye to cultural practices that violate the human rights of women and girls.”
The federal and state laws that prohibit FGM need to be enforced.”
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Go over to The Hill at the above link to read Nolan’s complete article.
“FGM,” of any type, is “bad stuff” as we found and I wrote in Matter of Kasinga, 21 I&N Dec. 357 (BIA 1996), the first case finding FGM to be “persecution” for U.S. asylum purposes!
PWS
02-09-18