Former UNICEF advisor: Female genital mutilation is 'gender egalitarian surgery'

A former advisor to the United Nations Children's Fund (UNICEF) and a former "health specialist" at the US National Institute of Child Health defended the practice of female genital mutilation when she appeared on Tucker Carlson's Fox News show.

Dr. Fuambai Ahmadu said she preferred the term "female circumcision" and described the practice of removing all or part of a woman's clitoris as "gender egalitarian surgery."

Washington Free Beacon:

Ahmadu told Carlson that she prefers the term "female circumcision" for the practice, during which part or all of a woman's sexual organs are removed for entirely non-medical reasons. She complained that Michigan doctor Jumana Nagarwala was recently arrested for performing a surgery that amounts to "a nick."

The New York Times reports that the "nick" Nagarwala performed "was so painful that [the girl] screamed and could barely walk afterward."

"If we do practice genital cutting here in the U.S. on boys, then it should not be impossible to understand that there are cultures, there are societies that practice what certain people are calling gender-inclusive genital surgeries,"Ahmadu argued.

"I just don't want it in my culture, in my society," Carlson retorted.

"Well, in our culture we don't discriminate,"Ahmadu said. "We have gender-egalitarian surgeries."

FGM is a felony in the United States, punishable with up to five years in prison. Human rights organizations like the World Health Organization and the United Nations consider the practice a violation of human rights, designed to control and degrade women.

Ahmadu is currently the editor in chief a women's quarterly magazine "dedicated to empowering circumcised women and girls in Africa and worldwide," according to her website.

This is a woman who sounds like she's in total denial - or has found a way to profit from defending FGM. She may have undergone the mutilation "voluntarily," but the little girls in Michigan who were the victims of Dr. Jumana Nagarwala did not have a choice. And neither do most of the little girls worldwide who are forced to endure the barbarity of this "procedure."

At least some American feminists are reluctant to criticize other cultures that encourage this outrage. The fact that FGM was made a felony in the US only recently speaks to the power of political correctness and the hesitation by some women's groups in the US to judge other cultures. 

For some, politics trumps women's health and well being.

As long as there are women like Fuambai Ahmadu willing to go on national television to defend the indefensible, FGM will continue to be forced on young girls who, in other circumstances, would look forward in their lives to a fulfilling, intimate relationship with their spouse, but are denied that opportunity by ignorance and superstition.

 

 

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