News Archive

News and Newsletter Update

From: J. Steven Svoboda
Date: 03 Oct 2003
Time: 21:46:22

Comments

Here is a roundup of some key events in recent months. Thanks as always to Al Fields, our latest newsletter is about to go to press. We are very pleased that this issue is planned to be twelve pages.

Steven

USAID's disgraceful promotion of circumcision is expanding, as they announced on September 11 (!), 2003 their donation of 12 million South African Rand (approximately $2.8 million) for the development of a pilot "circumcision village." For more information, see www.bday.co.za/bday/content/direct/1,3523,1429423-6078-0,00.html.

In what may be a first, in September, the Irish police arrested a practitioner and charged him under the Non-Fatal Offences Against Persons Act for allegedly circumcising a 29-day-old boy who bled to death following the botched procedure. Prior to the arrest, Dublin surgeon Matt McHugh, author of an anti-circumcision paper published in 1981 in the Irish Medical Journal, described circumcision as "a mutilation" and said that the procedure should be banned from Irish hospitals. Circumcision of boys is current provided in at least some Irish hospitals, following a referral from a general practitioner or other medical professional, but is generally performed when the boy is at least two years of age.

In July, leading intactivist attorneys David Llewellyn and Charles Bonner teamed up and achieved a significant victory in a Los Angeles case. The case involved an obese adult (circumcised in infancy) who was erroneously "circumcised" without consent while undergoing an unrelated hospital procedure, resulting in his near-total loss of a functioning penis. The award of just over $500,000 was announced in August after the panel of three arbitrators reached their decision. Congratulations are due all around. More details will be released when they are made available.

This same month, the first recorded prosecution ever under the 1996 federal law against female genital mutilation began when a 27-year-old Georgia man was indicted for aggravated assault and cruelty to children for allegedly circumcising his 3-year-old daughter with a pair of scissors. Efforts are afoot to pass a law in the state outlawing FGM. Currently eight states have such a law in addition to the federal law. All these statutes violate the constitutional guarantee of equal protection since they fail to safeguard the genital integrity of males.

In still another first, on September 24, a Ghanaian court sentenced a 50-year woman to five years' imprisonment for cutting the genital organs of three girls. The woman is the first person to be convicted since a 1994 amendment to the country's criminal code made the practice of FGM a second-degree felony. The presiding judge expressed concern about the persistence of the practice of FGM despite intense educational campaigns designed to stop the practice, and stated that the harsh sentence was intended to deter others from the practice. For more information, see http://www.ghanaweb.com/GhanaHomePage/NewsArchive/artikel.php?ID=43541

The UK House of Lords is currently considering the Female Genital Mutilation Bill. The new law will replace the 1985 UK statute, although no recorded prosecution ever took place under the prior law. The new bill is intended to continue all existing protections and to additionally stop the possibility of females being sent abroad to be mutilated. According to a report by Kevin Elks, no opposition is expected and no amendments have been tabled to date. The provided penalty is up to 14 years in prison, a fine, or both. The bill can be viewed at: http://www.publications.parliament.uk/pa/ld200203/ldbills/098/2003098.htm