Xanthippa's Chamberpot

This must not continue!!!

From the Ottawa Citizen:

‘A doctor in Britain faces up to 14 years in prison under that country’s Female Mutilation Act for allegedly performing an operation that is condoned in Canada by the Society of Obstetricians and Gynaecologists as part of a “culturally competent” approach to medical care.’

…

Dr. Margaret Burnett, an ob/gyn in Winnipeg, says that when women who have been the victim of infibulation have babies, their labia often have to be cut open for the baby to come out. After, she says, requests for reinfibulation are relatively common. That’s because it is considered normal for women who come from countries where FGM is widely done, mostly Africa and the Middle East.

“It’s my impression that we do get many requests for this and almost all of them come from the husbands,” Burnett says. “They want their wives closed again.”

In Canada, the ob/gyn society’s new guidelines, issued last November, suggest doctors explain the dangers of reinfibulation to patients, and that requests for the procedure “should be declined.”

That’s a softening from a policy statement issued 20 months earlier, which stipulated that requests for the operation “must be declined.”

…

Burnett, chair of the society’s social sexual committee that helped draw up the guidelines, says the approach was softened to be more culturally accepting. The change was made after speaking to immigrant women who have been through FGM.

…

Burnett says she herself has performed reinfibulations…

…

Dr. Beverley Chalmers, adjunct professor in the department of obstetrics and gynecology at the University of Ottawa, believes that caregivers in Canada should not be permitted to perform any form of genital mutilation that is not clinically necessary.

“To hide behind ‘cultural accommodation’ to permit the practice of FGM, or any other practice that is unquestionably harmful, is a craven distortion of political correctness … (and) is simply moral cowardice,” she says.

Kowser Omer-Hashi, a Somali-Canadian who wrote a book with Chalmers about Somali women’s birthing experiences in Canada, is shocked that Canadian society appears to tacitly allow reinfibulations. She remembers being mutilated — her clitoris cut and infibulated — as a child.

“I will never forget when I first had to pee,” she says. “The pain is indescribable.” ‘