Regardless how many laws we make against an activity, that doesn’t mean the activity will cease. The Female Genital Mutilation Act prohibits all medically unnecessary genital cutting on female minors in the United States. Such a law is appropriate and should’ve arisen the first time lawmakers became aware of such barbarism. That it took until the middle of the 1990s is absurd. Still, I am not naive enough to think FGM doesn’t occur either in America or to American girls taken outside the country.
Britain is no different, so London police are making a direct effort to bring attention to FGM:
A £20,000 reward has been offered to bring the first person in the UK to justice for performing female circumcision.
…A clinic in London is treating up to 500 women every year for health problems linked to female circumcision.
…[Metropolitan Police’s child abuse unit] warned that many children are taken overseas during the summer holiday to undergo the procedure.
I’m saddened that we live in a world where police have to offer a reward for people to bring such criminals to justice. If that’s what it takes, though, so be it. I don’t imagine we’d find much resistance in the U.S. to such a tactic by police.
I’ve updated the entry to include a link to the text of the Female Genital Mutilation Act.
I’ve moved two comments from this thread to my entry continuing the discussion.