ARC Executive Director Steven Svoboda is speaking at the upcoming Atlanta symposium, to be held in August. The symposium is entitled “16th International Conference on Child Genital Cutting” and is being co-organized by Intact America and the Law Office of David J. Llewellyn. More information can be obtained at https://www.intactamerica.org/intact2022/.
Steven’s abstract for the talk is based on his law review article that is currently under peer review at a top international children’s law journal. The abstract is as follows:
"Genital Autonomy, Equal Protection, and the Law: A Story of Two Judicial Decisions Seventeen Years Apart"
Steven will overview the genital autonomy movement’s progress toward genuine gender equity in our treatment of genital cutting practices, as well as signs of optimism and potential barriers to our making further progress. He will also discuss in detail two very different court decisions relating to the laws against female genital cutting in the US and in the UK. He discovered that the same judge was involved in a federal class action circumcision case in which he was a lawyer in New York and then, seventeen years later, was the judge in the case ruling that the federal law against female genital cutting (FGC) had to be invalidated because it was a matter reserved to the states by the federal Constitution. We can glean some interesting insights from comparing these two cases. He will also mention some recent European court decisions which are believed to be unknown, which his organization translated to English and then recently released the translations online.
ARC is sponsoring up to 4 (and possibly even more than that number) people in financial need to attend the Atlanta Symposium in August. I really believe these events are so important to our movement. The plan is to cover up to 100% of reasonable costs (plane flight, lodging, meals if any incur additional costs, etc.) of attending. We are stipulating that our assistance must be necessary for the recipient to be financially able to attend. ARC is also considering supporting the symposium in other ways.
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