“STOP Female Genital Mutilation Act of 2020” Heads To Trump’s Desk
“the STOP FGM Act was passed by Congress, which will give federal law enforcement the ability to prosecute perpetrators of FGM”
Congress has moved to amend the existing law against female genital mutilation, making it easier for law enforcement and for prosecutors to pursue charges and win convictions.
The legislation called “the “Strengthening the Opposition to Female Genital Mutilation Act of 2020” or the “STOP FGM Act of 2020” is headed to President’s Trump’s desk to be signed into law.
The Stop Female Genital Mutilation Act was passed by the Senate with a unanimous vote and now heads to the Oval Office for the president to sign. This critical federal legislation offers protection to so many vulnerable women and girls in the decades to come.
Female genital mutilation is the cutting or removal of these body parts of women for nonmedical purposes. The practice has no health benefits but levies physical and psychological effects. The Centers for Disease Control and Prevention estimates that more than 510,000 women and girls in the country have had female genital mutilation or are at risk of it.
The bill clarifies a commercial nature of female genital mutilation so that Congress has authority to ban this horrific practice under the commerce clause of the Constitution. It provides for a strong penalty of 10 years for those who carry out this heinous procedure. It also mandates that female genital mutilation rates and risks must be monitored and reported on by federal agencies that can increase awareness and prevention.
I want to personally thank @JacksonLeeTX18 and @MarshaBlackburn for their leadership and commitment to ending FGM in the U.S. In an incredibly difficult year, the little girls in our country who are vulnerable to this painful practice were not forgotten.
— Ayaan Hirsi Ali (@Ayaan) December 16, 2020
Although FGM is already against the law in the United States, the “Strengthening the Opposition to Female Genital Mutilation Act of 2020” is meant to empower federal law enforcement to prosecute the crime.
“It shall not be a defense to a prosecution under this section that female genital mutilation is required as a matter of religion, custom, tradition, ritual, or standard practice,” the text of the bill said.
The House of Representatives passed its version of the bill on Sept. 21, 2020.
You can read the full text of the legislation here.
DONATE
Donations tax deductible
to the full extent allowed by law.
Comments
Girls-girls? #BabyLivesMatter
This is a bad bill, and all conservatives ought to oppose it. We conservatives routinely complain that the Interstate Commerce clause has been distorted and expanded beyond all recognition. So when, once in a blue moon, a court finally puts its foot down and recognizes some limit on the clause, when it says “This has no connection whatsoever to interstate commerce, so if there are to be any limits at all to congress’s power this cannot be allowed”, all honest conservatives must applaud. For them to turn around and pass a travesty like this bill, just because it concerns a subject they disapprove of, makes a mockery of every time they complained about the misuse of the clause. Anyone who supports this shit has no right ever again to complain about the interstate commerce clause, or the enumerated powers doctrine.
The conservative position on this is and must be that without any evidence of interstate commerce this is entirely a matter for state laws. States have a general police power and have adequate authority to ban this awful thing and punish it. If a state has chosen not to, that’s its business. Go complain to its legislature.
Don’t worry Milhouse. This Supreme Court is likely to rule that the
“It shall not be a defense to a prosecution under this section that female genital mutilation is required as a matter of religion, custom, tradition, ritual, or standard practice,” clause is an imposition of oppressive Judeo-Christian theology and morals on Muslims. All it takes is a threat of riots. Right?
Subotai Bahadur
That is garbage. In the extremely unlikely event that it does get struck down, it will be on the same grounds it was struck down last time, because it has no connection whatsoever to interstate or international commerce. But it’s more likely that the courts will simply take Congress’s word that it is connected, because after all, would Congress lie?
Sigh. I did not think I would need the tag for this. Supposedly in some accounts, Chief Justice Roberts insisted on the Supreme Court NOT taking the Texas case on Biden “winning” by massive election fraud in multiple states because of fear of riots.
Subotai Bahadur
“Some accounts”? Whose accounts? You mean some wild speculation from people who hate Roberts. An account can only come from someone in a position to know.
I was a lurker on the Society of Professional Journalists perhaps 20 years ago. I am not a journalist, but I found investigative tips useful in my business enforcement activities.
There was a character named John on the forum who turned out to be a CAIR stooge. He had invited them to the forum, and they immediately started attacking people on the forum.
Another journalist brought up FGM, John and CAIR were arguing it was not a big deal. The journalist offered to go to Florida and perform the equivalent procedure on John.
John objected to being left with a small stub. That would have made his physical attributes more or less like his mental condition.
And this is relevant how?
Relevance is that CAIR cowered SPJ about the FGM issue. It goes to the decline of journalism. SPJ actually kicked the journalist off the forum to satisfy CAIR.
How is any of that relevant to the topic, which is whether congress has the authority to ban FGM?
Milhouse, as far as I’m concerned, we should adopt a constitutional amendment that all musslemen be stripped of citizenship and deported to their dual citizenship home, wherever that may be.
“You knew I was a snake when you took me in.”
Many Moslems have no dual citizenship. This is the only home they have. But in any case, if you want to propose a constitutional amendment go ahead. Convince 2/3 of each house of congress, and majorities in both houses of 38 state legislatures, and you can do this. At least you recognize that that’s what it would take.
Muslims are directed by their religion to be subversives. I do not care rather or not they have citizenship. Worldwide, we see these ungrateful ingrates use host countries money and goodwill, and then they do their best to turn host countries into the same sort of shit hole they came from. I would prefer that they were expelled, but I am ok with their being planted.
“Host countries”? Many of them are native-born Americans and have no other citizenship. In any case, at least Close understands that this would take a constitutional amendment. Do you? And how is any of it relevant to the topic, which is an illegitimate attempt by Congress to assert authority over a topic that the constitution reserves for the states.
How many are natives, which goes to the issue of birthright citizenship. They need to be tossed out. If they are not, it is only a matter of time before we are forced to kick their tails.
The majority of Moslems in the USA were born here, and are not citizens of any other country.
So you understand that Muslims conquer via a nearly 8 fold reproduction rate, and that is one of a long list of reasons they should be expelled from all civilized countries.
Moslems born here are just as American as you are and they are not “conquering”, this is their country just as much as it’s yours.
Especially those who have been here for more generations than you have.
In addition, it’s against international law to render people stateless. Even if we altered our constitution to let us remove people’s citizenship (which it currently doesn’t), if someone has no other citizenship then we still couldn’t do it to them without violating our international obligations.
Give it up Milhouse. We have to fight evil however we can.
While I agree with you about the ludicrous lengths the commerce clause has been stretched to, IIRC part of the issue here was the transport of minors across state lines to undergo the procedure. It’s certainly federal jurisdiction when minors are trafficked across state lines for sex; what’s the difference here?
Please point to the clause in Article 1 section 8 that lets Congress ban an assault in Michigan just because the victim had traveled there from Minnesota. Congress has the power to regulate interstate commerce. There was no commerce involved in this case, and there is no national market that it could be part of.
Okay, so your position is that the various federal human trafficking laws are also de jure unconstitutional?
I’m not arguing with you; this is an area of law I don’t have a lot of familiarity with.
Trafficking is by definition commercial. That’s what it means. Non-commercial movement of people is not trafficking.
Being a lawyer, shouldn’t you say that “It was alleged that there was no payment”
I have had quite a bit of experience dealing with Arabs. Usually, they see all deals as being renegotiable right up to when it is paid. They love to haggle. So, when selling them products, I quote them 20% higher, and when they insist on a better price I cut the bill by 10%, and keep 10% for the extra trouble. In one case I had one who paid the bill with no BS, so I discounted him 20%, and from then on did not include a dealing with BS 20% extra margin.
In my experience, it is unlikely that any Arab offering a service would do so without some form of compensation.
1. Somalis aren’t Arabs.
2. This is a religious function. Therefore it makes perfect sense that the doctor would have done it pro bono.
I agree with you, Milhouse.
Further, I am deeply concerned about the following language:
“It shall not be a defense to a prosecution under this section that female genital mutilation is required as a matter of religion, custom, tradition, ritual, or standard practice,”
That this breezed through the Democrat-held House should have us all wondering WHY. We know why Republicans would back it, but why would the ‘tolerant’ ‘multicultural’ left? Certainly not as an affront to the mostly Islamic practice of FGM.
My guess has already turned up in this thread: the real target is circumcision. That’s been one of the left’s pet goals for decades, and this is one more step toward that. There are a lot of other obvious things that the regressive left would love to exempt from religious freedom protections.
This should be a state issue, as abortion should be, not a national/federal one.
Fuzzy, doe you see Islam as a religion, considering its law and government components, I do not think it should be treated as a religion.
The definition of “religion” includes Islam. Saying Islam is not a religion is like saying a dog is not an animal. If Islam is not a religion then nor is Judaism, and nor is Christianity.
Islam is a religion, but it is also and foremost, I think, a governing mandate with its own laws on everything from taxation to what women can wear. Islam is both and all; they think it’s the perfect recipe for world peace (once they’ve slaughtered or enslaved all the non-Muslims, that is. Then just watch the unity and peace unfold! /sarc).
The question I have is whether the religious component is an actual function of some spiritual need or if it’s just the “hook” for the evil political Islam perpetrates. Murdering innocents for Allah is probably more palatable to the true believers than murder this group because they didn’t / or did do whatever that day.
I do think it’s important to remember that Muslims kill more Muslims in any given year than they do non-Muslims. It’s what these evil ideologies require, some kind of weird blood-letting to gain favor (or who knows). Anyway, when they start targeting us again in earnest (after Biden takes office is my guess), ask me again. 😛
That’s what a religion is.
Note that the bill doesn’t even claim that there’s an interstate market for this. That’s because there isn’t. Instead it claims that markets exist for this in other countries. Maybe so, but so what? The whole basis for extending the interstate commerce clause to entire intrastate transactions was that those transactions are inherently part of a nationwide market. Every decision to sell or not to sell wheat affects that market. If there’s a surplus of wheat in one state someone will export some to other states, and that will lower the national price.
Even the unfortunate decision in Reich depended on the existence of an interstate market in marijuana. But there is no interstate market in FGM. Performing a free mutilation in Michigan does nothing to the price of mutilations in Minnesota, because there is no such price. That’s why the existing federal law against it was struck down. Nor is there an international market. What it might hypothetically do to the domestic price of mutilation in Pakistan is none of the US congress’s business. It has no authority to regulate commerce in Pakistan.
What makes you thing that performing FGM was free, it was not. It is a fact that Somalin’s in Minnesota sent their young girls to Michigan to be butchered.
Every father who allows his daughters to be mutated should end up with a stub.
What makes you think that it wasn’t free? All the participants asserted that it was, and the prosecution did not present even a shred of evidence to indicate otherwise.
FGM is a REAL public health emergency….
No, it isn’t. It has nothing to do with public health, and its incidence is minuscule. State laws are more than enough to handle it; if your state has no such law, surely that’s its problem.
If parents were letting people cut off their kids’ fingers or ears for free or for hire, then that would be abuse….First, do NO harm!
And it would not be interstate commerce. It is not a federal crime to have someone cut your child’s fingers off. Do you think it should be?!
It was interstate, and I think that the perps lied about doing it free.
Based on what? The prosecution could not come up with any evidence for that whatsoever. What on earth makes you think otherwise, except your own bigotry?
Now do circumcision.
Not at all the same thing.
Finally, you got something right, circumcision is removal of foreskin, it makes it much easier to keep things clean, and it lowers transmission rate of some STD. It in no way lowers sexual pleasure.
FGM is equivalent to complete removal of the penis. It is done to deny women sexual pleasure via clitorial stimulation.
Omar is probably an example of this.
Yeah, it kind of is. Look, I know this is a third rail, especially on this site, but mutilating the genitalia – or hell, any other body part – of a minor child ought to be outright illegal regardless of the religion involved or the history of persecution of said religion. It’s wrong, and barbaric, and the various excuses offered are exactly the same as those offered in favour of FGM.
It is not the same thing at all. Circumcision does a boy no harm. Clitoridectomy does. The more minor acts included in section 4 of this bill’s definition are indeed like circumcision, and it’s wrong to ban them.
FGM is indeed a public health emergency that leads to serious health consequences for young girls, young mothers, babies undergoing the birth process, and children raised in a toxic traumatic atmosphere.
Male circumcision is a public health emergency when it is performed as a part of a public religious ceremony (versus by trained medical personnel in a health setting). I would presume that you are aware that NYC has tried to tackle this public health emergency locally….
Moils know what they’re doing.
And if they don’t, it’s no skin off…
Ah, never mind.
If you think it’s a public health emergency you understand neither the term “public health” nor the term “emergency”.
And yes, I remember Bloomberg’s attempt #534 to infringe on the bill of rights. The courts finally slapped it down and said they would subject it to strict scrutiny, which it could not survive. The “crisis” was mostly manufactured by the city.
In any case, if Antiochus couldn’t stop bris milah (we’ve just been celebrating his failure), and Hadrian couldn’t stop it, and the NKVD couldn’t stop it, what made Bloomberg think he could? We’ve seen off tyrants who would make him piss his pants; there is no penalty he could impose that would make us stop now.
Circumcision is not done to destroy self-determination. FGM is. Those maniacs doing it are tiny-dicked morons, terrified their women might discover most men in the world are secure enough not to need to mutilate a woman’s pleasure organs -not drape them in black hoods and robes – lest they leave them for better men. Ugh.
Instead of mutilating their women, they should train them to yap like Alexandra Cortez: no other man will want them.
Watch for the conflict of interest of people who are worried that a crackdown on FGM would lead to a similar crackdown on religious circumcision:
https://www.google.com/amp/s/www.wsj.com/amp/articles/city-flags-jewish-circumcision-ritual-following-new-herpes-cases-11582479087
It’s a legitimate concern, that allowing the state to ban FGM will lead to some states or cities banning circumcision as well. And if it was going to lead there, then I’d be against banning FGM. But to 99% of Americans the difference is obvious. Especially to those who are themselves circumcised, or at least know many others who are, and know that they suffered no harm from it.
Parents have the right to make decisions for their children, up to the point where they do serious harm. Nobody raises an eyebrow when they have their children’s ears pierced, but nobody would allow them to cut their children’s throats. Everyone must draw a line somewhere between those extremes. And almost everyone understands that circumcision is on one side of that line and clitoridectomy is on the other. Now if parents just want to make a scratch on the clitoris, as I understand some African people do, that doesn’t seem harmful to me, so I would probably allow it.
In any case, none of this has to do with the topic, which is whether congress has the right to make a law against it. It is 100% clear to me that it does not, and anyone who supports this law, and its purported basis in the interstate commerce clause, has no right to call themselves conservative, or ever again to complain when leftists propose federal laws with no basis in the constitution.
Relevant comments at the end of this article:
https://www.google.com/amp/s/www.timesofisrael.com/4-ny-babies-get-herpes-from-jewish-circumcision-rite-in-past-6-months/amp/
P.S. Keep in mind that, when these various religious ceremonies and obligations involving cutting and/or sucking young children’s genitals were developed, women had NO power or money in their societies to say, ‘NO!’
mutilating children and young people to satisfy some religious purpose/convictions of the parents/community is wrong–period
circumcision does not impair a male’s physical function–fgm unquestionably does harm females
doing irreversible, physical harm to an innocent human being is wrong–no other answer
other than your life, what in this world do you own more completely than your PHYSICAL BODY?
But when you’re a child your parents make all decisions for you, including ones that seem pretty scary, like whether you should have your tonsils or appendix out, and what country you should live in, and what physical risks you should be exposed to. Other people must be very cautious before interfering in such decisions, but there are very rare circumstances in which they have no choice. Human sacrifice, for instance. Or refusing life-saving medical treatment. Or taking the child to live in Cuba or the USSR. Or amputating necessary body parts.
Though there’s a good case to be made that the law should never interfere with parents’ custody of their children, but if things get bad enough individuals should break the law and kidnap the children, and if caught and tried they could explain to the jury what was happening, and why they had to act as they did, and let the jury decide. If it’s not bad enough to take such a risk, then it’s not bad enough to interfere with the family.
Remember: The topic of this post is not whether FGM should be illegal, but whether there should be a federal law against it. Congress has no police power; the states do.
It’s unreal that in 2020 we have to actually create a law like this, or that it could be struck down.
Female genital mutilation and religiously-performed male circumcision have ZERO health benefits for the children who are injured and/or murdered by these archaic and abusive religious practices. These are clear civil rights issues for the children who require the federal government to protect their civil rights.
The very vocal proponents of religiously-performed male circumcision understand that laws against FGM will inspire and inform laws against religiously-performed male circumcision.
The argument to keep the laws about FGM ‘local’ to each state is an attempt to thwart the true ‘democratic’ decision of the majority of people who would surely vote against old religious men (who KNOW they have herpes!) publicly sucking on baby penises and thereby giving the babies the herpes which might painfully murder or injure them. Religiously-performed male circumcision is indefensible!
While Milhouse and I butt heads regularly, on this forum, on this subject he is correct. FGM is both cruel and unnecessary. Studies have shown that the procedure causes detrimental psychological effects in females who are subjected to the procedure. This is the basis for several state laws against the procedure, which classify it as a form of child abuse. Just as ritualized scarification is illegal in most places in the US today.
He is also correct that, in most cases, the Commerce Clause would not be applicable. Many other products and services are banned or heavily regulated in one state, but legal or less heavily regulated in neighboring states. And, the federal government allows these differences in regulation of products and services in different states, because it has no Constitutional authority to regulate the product. Even the courts themselves have ruled that even though a customer crosses state lines to procure a product or service, this does not constitute interstate commerce. In fact, there are conflicting judicial rulings on whether the delivery of a product, purchased in one state and delivered to the buyer in another constitutes interstate commerce.
I’m more in agreement with Milhouse.
But first, let us define terms like the actual law does: “(e) For purposes of this section, the term ‘female genital mutilation’ means any procedure performed for non-medical reasons that involves partial or total removal of, or other injury to, the external female genitalia, and includes—
“(1) a clitoridectomy or the partial or total removal of the clitoris or the prepuce or clitoral hood;
“(2) excision or the partial or total removal (with or without excision of the clitoris) of the labia minora or the labia majora, or both;
“(3) infibulation or the narrowing of the vaginal opening (with or without excision of the clitoris); or
“(4) other procedures that are harmful to the external female genitalia, including pricking, incising, scraping, or cauterizing the genital area.”.
I’d say few people would have an issue with banning 1-3, that is setting aside the Commerce Clause implications of this. In fact, that’s what many people on this thread obviously and in the larger society think FGM is, legally. And that’s why it’s ‘so different’ than ‘circumscision’. But it really isn’t. It also leads to lots of Muslim Hate as one assumes that all muslims that practice this are cutting off parts or infibulating. In fact, for some the practice is literally just putting a hole in the labia with a small needle. But that’s banned too and treated exactly the same as the mutilations above.
There’s also all sorts of hypocrisy and ignorance on these issues. For instance, like it or not, both male circumcision and female circumcision are genital mutilations. Both involve (with the exception of the ‘prick’ type) cutting off or otherwise modifying (infibulating) something that is working perfectly fine to change its form. Both are SURGERIES. Both (esp the first two types of FGM) put their young recipients at risk. Yes, male infants have DIED due to botched circumcisions (there’s even something in Jewish tradition about a third son not needing circumcision if the other two died due to the procedure, even in the past this was obviously rare, but it obviously happened) Male babies have lost their penises to this procedure. So I’ll leave the religious and the It’s-For-Their-Health (even though practically nowhere outside of Isreal and the US has large rates of male circumcision nor do any foreign medical societies that I am aware of recommend it as a precaution against anything) people to explain to some poor unfortunate lad (bonus points if it wasn’t a religious circumscision but solely for preventative reasons) why he had to lose his penis without even being given a choice, or to the parents of some poor dead kid why this procedure (which everyone ‘knows’ is safe) is not required to be performed in a hospital, if it is to be performed at all. On the issue of whether it reduces (or if botched) can destroy a male’s sexual pleasure I’ll say the research on that is mixed. I will say that some nerves are destroyed so it stands to reason it at least reduces sexual pleasure, but once again, reason isn’t evidence. Then there are certain rare (but still performed) procedures of some of the strictly orthodox Jews which can lead to the transmission of certain diseases regardless of what else one thinks about them. In short, circumcision of males is not without significant risks, even though for the vast majority at most they lose a bit of sexual pleasure they will never know they could have had so probably never miss. Just remember that for both males and females this is a medically unnecessary surgery.
Now onto this law. Where I agree with Milhouse is that I think this does several bad things: A) Abuses the more modern understandings of the limits of the Commerce Clause B) Expands FGM a little too much with that 4th clause. If we aren’t going to freak out about the horrible (but admittedly rare) things that can go wrong with male circumcision then we shouldn’t have a law against basically doing no more than piercing the labia of an infant girl which is probably an even safer procedure (sterilized needle and a poke) than regular male circumcision. After all, if one is going to interfere with religion one needs a very good reason as the Orthodox Jewish community of NYC (for both good and bad reasons in my opinion) reminds us again and again. And we certainly shouldn’t be including such ‘pokes’ in our declarations of “Public Health Emergencies” and sacrificing our protections from misuses of the Commerce Clause for them.
Many uncircumcised men have SIGNIFICANT health problems as they age due to failing to properly clean their penises. I know a doctor who works in this area who said it’s REALLY gross (and very painful for the older men).
https://www.medicalnewstoday.com/articles/uncircumcised-problems
Well the same could be said about men that do not do proper care and have been circumcised.
There is no real health benefits for circumcision, just like an ear piecing of a baby.
In the United States, as many as 85% of male newborns were circumcised in 1965. But that number has fallen steadily for the past half-century, especially as immigration from countries where circumcision is not common has increased. In 2011, the Nationwide Inpatient Sample as reported by U.S. hospitals put the circumcision rate of newborn males at 57 percent.
https://worldpopulationreview.com/state-rankings/circumcision-rates-by-state
Genital mutilation is abuse if the person being mutilated is too young to consent – so, I do think this bill goes too far. Adults can and should make their own choices, but children should be protected.
OK, obviously merely “pricking, incising, scraping, or cauterizing” a girl’s genital area should not be banned, whether by the USA or by any state. And that’s not what 99% of people are referring to when they discuss this topic. If parents have the right to have their daughter’s ears pierced, they have the right to have her labia pierced; any law purporting to distinguish between these practices would be struck down, even in a state without a RFRA.
As for circumcision, any surgery carries some small risk. Parents have the right to expose their children to acceptable risk, if they think the benefit thereby obtained makes it worthwhile. The greater the benefit, the greater the risk that it can justify. Any parent who has allowed their child to go skiing, or hang-gliding, or hunting, or even merely swimming or playing football, has made such an assessment and nobody claims the state has any business interfering with it.
Circumcision used to carry a significant risk, back before germ theory had been invented, and before antibiotics existed. Even then, Jewish law not only permitted but required parents to take that risk, and all Jews considered it an acceptable risk. Only if a family had lost two sons to circumcision was the risk considered to be heightened enough to exempt all further sons.
Thankfully that sort of risk is now so far in the past that we have the luxury of discussing minuscule risks like the one that caused the herpes problem with Bloomberg a decade ago. Even if we were to trust the city’s numbers (and there is good reason not to), the baby is more at risk on the drive to and from where the bris is held than he is during the bris itself. Indeed even today the risk from the circumcision itself is greater than the risk of herpes. If it’s OK to expose the child to the minimal risk of circumcision, then how much more so is it OK to expose him also to this risk.
But the bottom line is that no ban is going to work, so it would be destructive of a society to try. All it would do is turn us into outlaws and fugitives, and that’s not a situation anyone wants.
OK, obviously merely “pricking, incising, scraping, or cauterizing” a girl’s genital area should not be banned, whether by the USA or by any state. And that’s not what 99% of people are referring to when they discuss this topic. If parents have the right to have their daughter’s ears pierced, they have the right to have her labia pierced; any law purporting to distinguish between these practices would be struck down, even in a state without a RFRA.
____________________________________________________________
you have no idea what ” 99% of the people ” are referring to–we are not living in the 15th century–” mutilating ” any child, casuing life-long physical harm and commensurate mental trauma is wrong, regardless of whatever law or jurisdiction may apply–you conflate appendectomies, tonsillectomies, ear piercings, etc with genuine mutilation–if parents are allowed to decide the one then they’re allowed to decide the other–bullshit–the parents cannot point to ONE benefit of genitally mutilating their female children–whether you can comprehend the distinction or not, it is clear that to allow ” mutilation ” of innocent children, with zero benefit to themselves and sustained out of some nebulous benefit to their parents, the practice is wrong and is criminal
You idiot. Do you pay any attention at all to what other people say, before replying to them? Merely “pricking, incising, scraping, or cauterizing” a girl’s genital area does not and cannot cause “life-long physical harm and commensurate mental trauma”. It’s not possible, and anyone who claims it does is a f***ing liar. It is not mutilation, any more than ear piercing is. And it’s certainly a whole lot less “mutilation” than circumcision or appendectomy, which are actual surgery. When people here “FGM” that is not what they are thinking of.
And it’s not for you to say whether the child benefits; to the parents, the benefit to the child is much greater than from ear piercing. A law banning such a trivial procedure, merely because the legislature dismisses the benefit the parents see in it, would definitely be struck down. How could you distinguish it from Lukumi Babalu or whatever the name of that case is?
I would argue that ear piercing IS mutilation. Not as severe,perhaps, as carving up genitalia, but it IS altering the body for non-medical reasons. When botched, it can cause lasting harm.
To say that either FGM or religiously-performed circumcision (or medically-performed circumcision are trivial procedures is very misleading. Let’s compare how many babies and children have died or been significantly injured from ear piercings, etc., versus FGM and male circumcision.
Also, to say that the controversy about religiously-performed circumcision is a decade old is incorrect. I cited an article from this year discussing multiple terrible outcomes of religiously-performed circumcision. It seems fairly obvious that the SAME herpes-infected rabbi(s) are continuing to injure (and murder?) baby boys in NYC.
It’s the herpes that is the main danger (more than the circumcision). You are attempting to mask the unsafe practice of herpes-infected rabbis performing circumcisions with the safety of medical circumcision. Also, if male circumcision is surgery than why are laypeople like rabbis being allowed to perform surgery? How many other medical surgeries involve doctors sucking on baby penises or other body parts?!
No “herpes-infected rabbis” are performing circumcisions. Any mohel who tests positive for HPV stops practicing until he stops shedding. And there is no proof that any baby was actually infected from a bris. NYC’s exaggerated claims were not backed up by solid evidence, and were contradicted by the Rockland County medical authorities.
But even supposing NYC’s numbers were correct, a baby would still be at less risk during the bris than on the drive to and from it, not to mention every time he is driven to and from a doctor’s appointment, or the playground, or anywhere else. And that level of risk is 100% acceptable, because we do routinely accept it. There is thus no basis for banning it only when it comes to a religious requirement. That is unconstitutional, even under Smith.
The techniques listed in #4 can indeed cause life-long physical harm and commensurate trauma. Scraped and/or cauterized uteruses are very painful for grown women. Cauterization can be used as permanent birth control. Using these techniques on the clitorises of young girls or young women would indeed be life altering in a bad way.
Explain how pierced labia are any different from pierced ears.
Herpes endangers children:
https://www.upi.com/Archives/1984/05/31/Herpes-endangers-newborns/9618454824000/
And as your article says, most babies who get herpes get it at birth. There is no proof that any baby has ever got it from a bris, but even if some have they are a small percentage of the total, which is itself an insignificant percentage of all circumcisions, let alone of all births.
Pierced ears are different from pierced labia because no one is urinating, having bowel movements near, and rubbing germy toilet tissue multiple times a day near pierced ears! Piercings in weird germy places like noses, mouths, noses, and stomachs can get infected with very bad results.
As you surely know because you alluded to religious people going underground to perform religious circumcisions if banned, the affected communities have withheld and are withholding the proof by refusing to identify the rabbi(s) associated with the babies who have become gravely ill and/or died from religious circumcisions. That tells me that the affected communities know exactly which rabbi(s) have the herpes that has negatively impacted children’s health and lives.
It appears that some NYC rabbi(s) and affected congregations: 1) know and/or legitimately suspect that their rabbi(s) have herpes, 2) know and/or legitimately suspect that their rabbi(s) have already infected, injured, and murdered one or more babies due to the transmission of herpes via religiously-performed circumcisions. It is indefensible to allow those rabbi(s) to continue infecting babies with herpes!