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New legislation signed into law by Michigan Gov. Rick Snyder on Tuesday makes female genital mutilation a felony punishable by up to 15 years in prison. The laws apply both to doctors who conduct the procedure and parents who transport a child to undergo it. "Those who commit these horrendous crimes should be held accountable for their actions, and these bills stiffen the penalties for offenders while providing additional support to victims," Gov. Snyder said in a statement. "This legislation is an important step toward eliminating this despicable practice in Michigan while empowering victims to find healing and justice."
The governor also signed a bill allowing for a health professional's license or registration to be revoked if he or she is convicted of female genital mutilation.
Michigan is the 26th state to ban the practice; the state laws go into effect in October. The practice was banned in the United States in 1996, but Michigan's laws impose harsher penalties than the federal law. The package of bills comes amid the federal criminal trial of an emergency room doctor in Michigan, Jumana Nagarwala, charged with performing the procedure on multiple girls at a clinic in suburban Detroit. The Department of Justice says it believes the case is the first to be brought under the federal law. Another doctor and his wife are also charged in the case, the AP reports.
(Score: 2) by tangomargarine on Friday July 14 2017, @03:57PM (34 children)
Got all the way to the third-to-last paragraph before they finally used a pronoun to identify her. How does a DOCTOR, a WOMAN doctor even, possibly justify this?! Ever heard of a thing called the fucking Hypocratic Oath? And "first do no harm"?
"Is that really true?" "I just spent the last hour telling you to think for yourself! Didn't you hear anything I said?"
(Score: 2, Funny) by Bot on Friday July 14 2017, @04:04PM (5 children)
> Hypocratic
*hypocritical
(hey don't blame me, I am just applying an algorithm)
Account abandoned.
(Score: 2) by tangomargarine on Friday July 14 2017, @04:59PM (4 children)
People using "hypocritical" to mean "stupid" is up there on my list of misused words that drive me nuts. This doctor would only be hypocritical for performing FGM if she was a well-known opponent of FGM.
"Is that really true?" "I just spent the last hour telling you to think for yourself! Didn't you hear anything I said?"
(Score: 2) by Bot on Friday July 14 2017, @07:38PM
I have some familiarity with Greek terms, thank you. I could have been referring to the hypocrisy of some (#notalldoctors) people who swear the oath and then make money off the patients by not pursuing the optimal long term cure, opting for treatments or suboptimal alternatives.
Account abandoned.
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Friday July 14 2017, @07:46PM (2 children)
If she took the Hippocratic oath but she's doing genital snips--which she denies doing? Unless she believes snipping is harmless, that's hypocritical. Because the Hippocratic oath goes something like "first, do no harm." If you take an oath to do no harm, then you do harm, that's hypocrisy. It's a broken promise. Bot was half-joking, I think, but it makes a point even so.
(Score: 3, Informative) by tangomargarine on Friday July 14 2017, @08:22PM (1 child)
According to Wikipedia it's a misconception that "first, do no harm" is actually in the Hippocratic Oath, but the sentiment definitely is.
I didn't think of it from that angle; thanks.
Apparently I misspelled "Hippocratic" as OP and missed it. D'oh.
"Is that really true?" "I just spent the last hour telling you to think for yourself! Didn't you hear anything I said?"
(Score: 2) by chromas on Friday July 14 2017, @10:56PM
Oh, no you don't! You can't just secede from the argument in a polite manner like that. Where are the insults? Where's the name calling?
(Score: 2, Insightful) by Kilo110 on Friday July 14 2017, @04:07PM (1 child)
Either she has zero scruples and will do anything for money.
Or it's been done to her and she's been brought up to believe it's the right and proper thing to do.
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Friday July 14 2017, @09:10PM
Or she's actually innocent. But I guess waiting for the jury is old-fashioned.
(Score: 3, Insightful) by tangomargarine on Friday July 14 2017, @04:14PM (13 children)
(For those of you who wisely don't want to read the gory details, infibulation is where they sew them up completely.)
Okay I don't want to live on this planet anymore.
"Is that really true?" "I just spent the last hour telling you to think for yourself! Didn't you hear anything I said?"
(Score: 3, Interesting) by bob_super on Friday July 14 2017, @04:23PM (11 children)
The women do it because they fear the rejection of their daughters by their husbands, which is their original setting leaves them as worthless and a shameful stain on the family.
And that makes little sense in the US context, where the girl may be rejected by the most traditional part of the group, but not by the rest of the male population. I guess they haven't progressed past the marry-in-the-group phase yet.
(Score: 4, Insightful) by tangomargarine on Friday July 14 2017, @04:32PM (7 children)
And the most maddening part of it is that there's absolutely no medical benefit to doing it. So it's a self-perpetuating peer pressure thing for entirely cosmetic and cultural morality reasons. Apparently somebody at some point said, "Hey, let's take a knife to that. Just because." But of course there are a variety of medical risks to doing it.
According to Wikipedia 97 percent of women in Egypt in 1985 were getting it.
"Is that really true?" "I just spent the last hour telling you to think for yourself! Didn't you hear anything I said?"
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Friday July 14 2017, @04:38PM (6 children)
Women, or children?
(Score: 2) by Osamabobama on Friday July 14 2017, @06:31PM (5 children)
Let's say children, and agree not to quibble about the age of majority in Egypt (emphasis mine):
From the Wikipedia entry on female genital mutilation [wikipedia.org].
And here's a little bit more about the data:
Appended to the end of comments you post. Max: 120 chars.
(Score: 4, Informative) by takyon on Friday July 14 2017, @06:40PM (4 children)
I would never have guessed it was that prevalent in Egypt. Holy shit.
https://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/File:FGM_prevalence_UNICEF_2016.svg [wikimedia.org]
2016:
(don't emulate) Somalia 98%
Djibouti (home of the foreign militaries) 93%
Egypt 87%
Sudan 87%
Yemen 19%
Iraq 8%
[SIG] 10/28/2017: Soylent Upgrade v14 [soylentnews.org]
(Score: 5, Informative) by KiloByte on Friday July 14 2017, @09:40PM (2 children)
And MGM in United States: 71% [nih.gov], for boys born in the 70's: 91%.
You can expect a fourth-world hellhole like Somalia to cut little kids' genitalia, but such barbarous practice in a supposedly civilized country is unforgivable.
Ceterum censeo systemd esse delendam.
(Score: 2) by cafebabe on Saturday July 15 2017, @05:15PM (1 child)
So, the figures for genital mutilation should be:-
Somalia: 49%
Djibouti: 46%
Egypt: 43%
Sudan: 43%
USA: 35%
Yemen: 9%
Iraq: 4%
1702845791×2
(Score: 3, Informative) by KiloByte on Sunday July 16 2017, @01:57AM
Somalia also mutilates 93% of men, so total genital mutilation is 95.5% (gender population ratio in Somalia is roughly balanced).
Among these countries, Sudan is the only outlier with "only" 47% MGM, the rest are in 90%s.
Ceterum censeo systemd esse delendam.
(Score: 2) by Bot on Saturday July 15 2017, @01:50PM
> (don't emulate) Somalia 98%
> Djibouti (home of the foreign militaries) 93%
> Egypt 87%
> Sudan 87%
> Yemen 19%
> Iraq 8%
hmmm this is not the chart they picked when deciding where to export democracy to.
Account abandoned.
(Score: 1) by Ethanol-fueled on Friday July 14 2017, @11:38PM (2 children)
The women do it also because there is a strict division between the sexes, as seen in Female-only shopping malls in the Middle-East, etc.
Another reason is that Muslim men are incapable of looking at even bare female ankles or toes without being stirred into an uncontrollable sexual frenzy which causes them to rape everything in sight regardless of age or species.
Westerners have given a name to this phenomenon: Sexual Emergency.
(Score: 2) by Bot on Saturday July 15 2017, @01:51PM
> Westerners have given a name to this phenomenon: Sexual Emergency.
huh? I thought it was "getting away with it"
Account abandoned.
(Score: 2) by cafebabe on Saturday July 15 2017, @05:23PM
If a man has this problem then perhaps the onus should be for one man to wear blinkers rather than every woman to wear a sheet.
1702845791×2
(Score: 3, Insightful) by Grishnakh on Friday July 14 2017, @08:48PM
It's just like one of my personal theories of life: every group of people is its own worst enemy.
Women have much more to fear in being oppressed by other women than they do from men.
(Score: 0, Flamebait) by ikanreed on Friday July 14 2017, @04:55PM
It's almost unthinkable for the kinda men who promote or enforce FGM to let a male see their daughter in a state of undress. If you read the stories about countries where this is still commonplace(if usually illegal), it's treated like a sacred ritual for all the women in the family without the men.
Never underestimate people's ability to perpetuate an unjust status quo onto the next generation because "that's how it's always been done".
(Score: 2, Insightful) by Anonymous Coward on Friday July 14 2017, @05:35PM
This shit is done to girls by women in every suckystan it's practiced in.
Women do tend to pass all kinds of damage to their daughters' generation. Instinctual antagonism with up-and-coming younger females, or whatever.
(Score: 2) by DeathMonkey on Friday July 14 2017, @06:20PM (9 children)
This doctor is a woman?!
And?? Women can't be religious whack-jobs?
What're you, some kind of Bro-selytizer!
(Score: 2) by tangomargarine on Friday July 14 2017, @06:33PM (8 children)
No, my comment had nothing to do with religion. One would think that, logically, women would have more empathy getting in the way of mangling girls due to their shared circumstances.
Emphasis on "logically": there seems to be very little logic involved in the practice as a whole.
"Is that really true?" "I just spent the last hour telling you to think for yourself! Didn't you hear anything I said?"
(Score: 2) by Justin Case on Friday July 14 2017, @07:18PM (5 children)
Male doctors don't seem to feel any "solidarity" with the males they routinely mutilate.
Let me guess: but women are special-good, is that it?
(Score: 2) by tangomargarine on Friday July 14 2017, @07:28PM (4 children)
Maybe they should.
SN is getting way too adversarial these days.
"Is that really true?" "I just spent the last hour telling you to think for yourself! Didn't you hear anything I said?"
(Score: 2) by DeathMonkey on Friday July 14 2017, @07:40PM
Don't look at me, I was just trying to crowbar that Bro-selytizer joke into the discussion!
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Friday July 14 2017, @11:03PM
NO! It isn't! You idiot, mangobutter! It is all because of the Russian money and "opposition research" promoting xenophobia and hypocritical oaths.
(Score: 2) by isostatic on Saturday July 15 2017, @01:50AM (1 child)
SN was born out of "Fuck Beta", and you wonder about adversarial people?
(Score: 2) by Bot on Saturday July 15 2017, @01:52PM
why, you have a problem with it?
Account abandoned.
(Score: 2) by Grishnakh on Friday July 14 2017, @08:51PM (1 child)
You're thinking too sensibly. It actually makes sense that it's the women pushing this crap more. Remember, women are generally less logical thinkers, and more inclined to be religious, than men. There's even country music songs by women talking about dragging their men to church, and I've heard of Christian women complaining how they can't find any men to date in church because there's 10 single young women for every single guy, and the 1 guy is a creep.
In general, women are more likely to push to maintain the status quo and not rock the boat, so in a conservative religious society, that means maintaining the religious traditions and promoting the religion.
(Score: 2) by Leebert on Saturday July 15 2017, @12:44AM
I must be going to the wrong church.
Well, at least that part is right.