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posted by martyb on Friday July 14 2017, @03:25PM   Printer-friendly
from the cut-it-out! dept.

http://www.npr.org/sections/thetwo-way/2017/07/12/536863961/michigan-laws-will-increase-penalties-for-performing-female-genital-mutilation

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.


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  • (Score: 4, Insightful) by ikanreed on Friday July 14 2017, @08:02PM (1 child)

    by ikanreed (3164) Subscriber Badge on Friday July 14 2017, @08:02PM (#539304) Journal

    So... your solution to the (for the moment entirely hypothetical) problem of underreporting is to increase maximum punishment?

    Do I have your argument correct? Am I misrepresenting you in some way? Because that's fucking retarded.

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  • (Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Saturday July 15 2017, @05:01AM

    by Anonymous Coward on Saturday July 15 2017, @05:01AM (#539471)

    I wasn't offering a solution.

    Generally, fast and reliable punishment tends to be a better deterrent than severe punishment. Of course, the best is both.

    Here we're dealing with people who would gladly suffer moderate punishment, so some severity is required. These people are worthless garbage, so killing them would be no loss for society. The most effective punishment would likely be transfusions of pig blood or pig shit, or drowning them in pig shit, causing death in a way that they feel would send them directly to Hell.

    Getting the punishment to be fast and reliable would be invasive. I suppose it would catch other kinds of abuse too: for example, kids with STDs have likely been attacked. So yeah, quarterly crotch exams for everybody under age 25 would find this stuff.