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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: 1, Troll) by Anonymous Coward on Friday July 14 2017, @03:31PM (40 children)
Our moslem brothers have every right to oppress, mutilate, and honor kill women however they wish! Infidel laws in kfir countries do not apply!
(Score: 1, Flamebait) by frojack on Friday July 14 2017, @03:37PM (13 children)
Which would be exactly the position of the "Progressives" if the bill had been submitted or signed by Trump.
No, you are mistaken. I've always had this sig.
(Score: 4, Insightful) by ikanreed on Friday July 14 2017, @04:01PM (12 children)
Man, you pro-treason asshats really gotta reach to blame everything on the libs don't you?
It's been illegal in the entire country, with 5 years of jailtime [cornell.edu] for doing so. Guess who signed that law. Go on. Also guess who proposed it [wikipedia.org].
All your idiot Snyder is doing is taking a law that's known to have been broken once, ever and pretending like it's the human rights crisis of our time, and you buy it hook, line, and sinker, because, as I have noted before, you're fucking retarded.
(Score: 0, Flamebait) by ikanreed on Friday July 14 2017, @05:10PM (6 children)
I always forget how sensitive traitors are. Sorry for hurting your feelings, retards.
(Score: 1, Insightful) by Anonymous Coward on Friday July 14 2017, @06:38PM (5 children)
making friends and influencing people
(Score: 1, Insightful) by Anonymous Coward on Friday July 14 2017, @07:12PM (4 children)
Who wants to befriend idiots, get dragged into stupid arguments where you try and explain reality to clearly delusional people, get called names, get harassed, and ultimately have your ideals compromised just to shut up the inane stupidity?
Seriously, who would want to do that? Better to let the idiots know you don't respect them than to try and put wasted effort into helping them.
Sorry, are you idiots offended? Still defending Trump? Still buying the GOP propaganda? Idiots don't need to be respected until they start making even a tiny effort to fix themselves. Until then they can hang out in the special needs GrOuP.
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Friday July 14 2017, @07:32PM
making friends & influencing people
(Score: 3, Insightful) by tangomargarine on Friday July 14 2017, @09:05PM (2 children)
Have you ever heard the saying, "If you don't have something nice to say, don't say anything at all"? Take a chill pill, Azuma.
obligatory xkcd [xkcd.com]
"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, Troll) by Ethanol-fueled on Friday July 14 2017, @11:24PM (1 child)
Reminder: XKCD is With Her™. [xkcd.com]
Then Randall discovered that women can smell Men Who are Much Nicer Than They Have to Be™ a mile away and the vote he thought would get him pussy did, alas, sadly, fatefully, regretfully, get him none. He came close one time but that lady ended up going home with a V-chested tribal-tattooed Trump-voting Black man with a swastika tattoo on his forehead.
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Saturday July 15 2017, @03:50PM
He already came out as a tranny anyways.
(Score: 1, Informative) by Anonymous Coward on Friday July 14 2017, @06:05PM (4 children)
If you don't want to get caught, this is almost the perfect crime.
The parents are willing. The doctor (part of the same community) is willing. The child depends on the parents for everything, loves the parents, and doesn't understand what is happening. Who is going to talk?
Obviously, the parents and doctor won't fess up to a crime. The child would experience additional hurt if the parents went to prison, and anyway the child loves the parents.
Who is going to know? We don't have a policy of independent experts regularly checking little girl parts. Maybe we should! Without that, this crime goes unreported. Nobody with knowledge of the crime has any incentive to report it.
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Friday July 14 2017, @07:56PM
Little girls don't remain Daddy's little girls forever.
(Score: 4, Insightful) by ikanreed on Friday July 14 2017, @08:02PM (1 child)
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.
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Saturday July 15 2017, @05:01AM
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.
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Saturday July 15 2017, @03:06PM
Couldn't the TSA report this crime?
(Score: 1, Informative) by Anonymous Coward on Friday July 14 2017, @03:39PM (21 children)
Exactly. The American Academy of Pediatrics even recommends that female genital mutilation should be widely available as a harm reduction measure. (lol [nytimes.com]!) The AAP writes [aappublications.org]:
Cultural sensitivity is imperative in these matters. Muslims deserve equal rights
to violate the bodies of their childrento religious freedom!Clearly, education is the key, and educated, culturally sensitive people will be more accepting of this diversity.
The most knowledgeable body of pediatricians in the world knows that all forms of ritual genital mutilation, both male and female, are
$100,000,000 per year profit centers of unnecessary surgeryrespectable medical procedures.(Score: 4, Insightful) by Anonymous Coward on Friday July 14 2017, @03:45PM (13 children)
Meanwhile male circumcision is widely endorsed. I'm guess it's not as harmful in its long term effects based on popular opinion, but then again popular opinion is frequently wrong and I have no other basis by which to judge.
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Friday July 14 2017, @03:50PM
Yep. If everybody else jumps off a cliff, I was always told to follow suit. If a doctor tells you to jump off a cliff, then it's a no-brainer. Throw yourself over the cliff! That many people and experts can't be wrong! lol
(Score: 3, Funny) by Wootery on Friday July 14 2017, @03:53PM
Is a quick Google too much to ask?
(Score: 5, Insightful) by Thexalon on Friday July 14 2017, @04:05PM (4 children)
There haven't been as many studies on it, but there's some evidence that it causes similar although not quite as drastic harms as female circumcision, such as reduction in sexual pleasure. Of course, the real reason it hasn't received the same kind of scrutiny is that it's something "our" people do rather than those weirdos from faraway places that talk funny.
The only thing that stops a bad guy with a compiler is a good guy with a compiler.
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Friday July 14 2017, @04:36PM (1 child)
Don't be stupid. This is almost a partial abortion and must be punished as such.
(Score: 2) by tangomargarine on Friday July 14 2017, @05:02PM
Which, FGM or circumcision?
I don't buy your analogy.
"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 lgsoynews on Friday July 14 2017, @06:21PM
From what I've read, the result depends on people (and probably on how the circumcision is done).
Some men who were operated as adults report a GAIN in pleasure, some a LOSS (and regret their decision).
Those are individual testimonies, I don't know if there has been a serious study on the subject.
Of course, the problem if that most are operated very young and don't have a comparison point, very convenient for the assholes who push for it being done on kids. (I have nothing against adult deciding to be operated if it's a personal choice)
(Score: 2) by NotSanguine on Friday July 14 2017, @09:13PM
Please provide citations for this that don't come from the anti-circumcision crowd.
Not saying it isn't true, but buying biased claims without confirming them isn't the best way to get at the truth.
No, no, you're not thinking; you're just being logical. --Niels Bohr
(Score: 4, Informative) by NewNic on Friday July 14 2017, @04:44PM (4 children)
FTFY. Male circumcision is rare outside of Jewish communities in Europe.
lib·er·tar·i·an·ism ˌlibərˈterēənizəm/ noun: Magical thinking that useful idiots mistake for serious political theory
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Friday July 14 2017, @06:10PM
Jews are a tiny minority in Europe.
(source [pewresearch.org])
(Score: 2) by lgsoynews on Friday July 14 2017, @06:16PM (2 children)
Not that rare.
I'm french (and not Jewish, my family is atheist). I'm lucky enough to have escaped the moronic doctors' scalpel, but my younger brother was circoncised -for no medical reason- as a baby. I think at the time those MORONS thought it was some hygienic measure, despite the fact that it's well, total B.S.
So, about 40 years ago, it was done in France.
(Score: 1, Redundant) by MostCynical on Friday July 14 2017, @10:05PM
While some reasons are purely cultural, there are medical grounds for male circumcision.
Male circumcision can help limit HIV transmission http://www.catie.ca/en/fact-sheets/prevention/penile-circumcision-reduce-risk-hiv-infection [catie.ca]
And has been shown to have up 73% curative effect on the auto-immune disease BXO.
"I guess once you start doubting, there's no end to it." -Batou, Ghost in the Shell: Stand Alone Complex
(Score: 1) by Ethanol-fueled on Friday July 14 2017, @11:34PM
Uh, what? I'm Murrican, and my totally non-homosexual observations throughout the years yield a best guess across all my definitely non-Jew friends and sports teammates of 95% circumcised. I am not and considered it in my adult years because foreskin is ugly as fuck. It reminds me of an elephant's trunk, or a housefly's proboscis. Only problem is that once it's gone, there's no getting it back (disregarding some bullshit phoney procedure which is nothing like the real thing).
When I was bored and alone I used to play with it like it were chewing gum, rolling it up in a pencil or blousing it back inward on itself.
There is some truth about it regarding matters of cleanliness, but it's like any other part of your body in that it's clean if you wash it regularly, unclean if you don't.
(Score: 2) by Magic Oddball on Saturday July 15 2017, @07:02PM
Not popular opinion — fact. 'Circumcising' a female would involve just removing the small part of the clitoral hood that covers the tiny tip of the clitoris that's visible if the hood is retracted. Female Genital Mutilation is a whole other level of structural damage, as Wikipedia describes:
"[It can] include removal of the clitoral hood and clitoral glans; removal of the inner labia; and removal of the inner and outer labia and closure of the vulva. In this last procedure, known as infibulation, a small hole is left for the passage of urine and menstrual fluid; the vagina is opened for intercourse and opened further for childbirth."
(Score: 2) by bob_super on Friday July 14 2017, @04:30PM (2 children)
> The most knowledgeable body of pediatricians in the world
It would be really nice if most Americans stopped non-jokingly elevating anything the US does as "the best in the world". Thanks for one clear example.
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Friday July 14 2017, @07:31PM (1 child)
(Score: 2) by bob_super on Friday July 14 2017, @08:09PM
> best aircraft carrier [military-today.com]
How high was the guy who wrote that ranking?
I'll give the Ford Class a pass for not being quite ready, and the Elizabeth class is still so far out from being useful it should be near last...
The Russian carrier is acknowledged to be in terrible shape, yet number 3 ? The Chinese one is pretty limited, yet number 4?
If actually ranked by "deadliest" (and not to their own crew), it should be
0: Ford (soon operational)
1: Nimitz class
2: Charles de Gaulle
3: Sao Paulo
(a-k-a the catapult-driven, 4th-gen planes equipped carriers)
4-6: not quite sure how to rank the Italian vs the Indian vs the Chinese
7: Russia
8: UK, expected to climb once it get real planes
9: Thailand.
(Score: 4, Informative) by DeathMonkey on Friday July 14 2017, @06:17PM
Those links don't really say what you are claiming they say.
The NYT piece is saying that maybe it should be OK to perform a less-harmful procedure if it means the victim doesn't get flown to Africa to have her entire clitoris removed in unsanitary conditions.
The AAP is explicitly against FGM. From your link:
The American Academy of Pediatrics believes that pediatricians and pediatric surgical specialists should be aware that this practice has life-threatening health risks for children and women. The American Academy of Pediatrics opposes all types of female genital cutting that pose risks of physical or psychological harm, counsels its members not to perform such procedures, recommends that its members actively seek to dissuade families from carrying out harmful forms of FGC, and urges its members to provide patients and their parents with compassionate education about the harms of FGC while remaining sensitive to the cultural and religious reasons that motivate parents to seek this procedure for their daughters.
Your quote is from the section where they are defining the terms used in the paper.
(Score: 5, Insightful) by Grishnakh on Friday July 14 2017, @08:45PM (2 children)
I'm pretty liberal, but that stuff is a bunch of horseshit. It's mutilation, plain and simple: any time you perform a medically-unnecessary procedure, it's mutilation. Getting your ears or nose pierced is mutilation too, though it's so minor that it's not a big problem (and it's generally only done on adults). Why are they trying to discourage accurate language to avoid offending religious nuts?
Same goes for male genital mutilation too: it's mutilation, and it's not necessary. Humans should not be physically altered before they're old enough to consent, unless there is a clear medical reason to do so.
(Score: 1) by Ethanol-fueled on Friday July 14 2017, @11:36PM
Because they will mutilate your head off just like they mutilate genitals off. Also, feminist liberals think it's okay.
(Score: 2) by cafebabe on Saturday July 15 2017, @05:08PM
That's best practice for intersex people and it should be best practice for everyone.
1702845791×2
(Score: 1, Informative) by Anonymous Coward on Saturday July 15 2017, @12:32AM (3 children)
What about Male Genital mutilation?!?!
Some of us want our foreskins back! Some of our girlfriends/potential girlfriends want it back too!
Remember, minors can't consent! So why should any form of (pre-majority) genital mutilation be allowed?!?!
(Score: 2) by Immerman on Saturday July 15 2017, @02:25AM (2 children)
I agree it's something that we should seriously reconsider as a culture, though mine never caused me any issues (and was done for medical reasons)
Female "circumcision" is in an entirely different class though - more akin to removing most of the nerves from your penis than just the mostly vestigial evolutionary remains of your sheath.
(Score: 2, Informative) by EEMac on Saturday July 15 2017, @05:59PM (1 child)
It's tough to find unbiased information on this, but if you'll accept Wikipedia as Neutral:
"The foreskin is specialised tissue that is packed with nerves and contains stretch receptors.[6][26][27] Sorrells et al. (2007) reported the areas of the penis most sensitive to fine touch are on the foreskin.[28]" (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Foreskin)
It may not be perfectly equivalent, but it sounds comparable. Genital mutilation of either gender is a horrible practice.
(Score: 2) by Magic Oddball on Saturday July 15 2017, @08:59PM
I agree that genital mutilation of either gender is horribly wrong — but circumcision & FGM aren't really comparable. Also from Wikipedia:
"Procedures differ according to the country or ethnic group. They include removal of the clitoral hood and clitoral glans; removal of the inner labia; and removal of the inner and outer labia and closure of the vulva. In this last procedure, known as infibulation, a small hole is left for the passage of urine and menstrual fluid; the vagina is opened for intercourse and opened further for childbirth."
Or to put it another way, I suppose: circumcision was designed to prevent males from masturbating by removing a source of pleasure, while FGM is intended to prevent females from doing anything remotely sexual aside from servicing/mating with their eventual husband by removing all pleasure & replacing it with pain.