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200 million women have had their vaginas cut, sliced and sewed, often with animal gut, sometimes so tight there is only a hole about the size of the matchstick left for urinating and monthly menstruation. When a girl is married her husband often penetrates an open wound. In childbirth she has to be cut open and stitched up again. The practice has spread to America. Recent surveys have showed an alarming jump in vacation cuttings, families sending their daughters back to the countries they came from to be cut in secret and even some cuttings happening here.
4th person charged in Detroit genital mutilation case
by Sonia Moghe, CNN
June 14, 2017
A Detroit-area wife and mother accused of being involved in a federal female genital mutilation case was arrested Wednesday near her home and released hours later, under the condition that she doesn't talk to members of her religious community or attend her mosque. Tahera Shafiq, 48, is charged with conspiracy to commit female genital mutilation and aiding and abetting female genital mutilation... [MORE]
Even for girls in U.S., female genital mutilation and 'vacation cutting' are risks
by Alison Bowen, Contact Reporter, Chicago Tribune
June 13, 2017
Elizabeth Ralyea remembers people holding her arms and legs while she screamed and kicked at the woman who approached with a razor blade. She thinks she was about 6, or maybe 8, and she was living with her family in the West African country of Burkina Faso. The elder woman began to cut between Ralyea's legs, she recalled. When she yelled at the woman, her mother grabbed a branch to swat her for being impolite, she said. "It's a lot of pain," recalls Ralyea, now 48.... [MORE]
Michigan Case Adds U.S. Dimension to Debate on Genital Mutilation
by Pam Belluck, New York Times
June 10, 2017
As more details emerge about the first-ever charges of female genital mutilation in the United States, the case is opening a window onto a small immigrant community, while stirring impassioned discussion about genital cutting among women who have experienced it.At a hearing in Michigan this past week, a federal prosecutor said the defendants — two doctors and a clinic manager from a small Shiite Muslim sect — were believed to have arranged cutting for up to 100 girls since 2005... [MORE]
FGM silences a woman’s most primal voice
by Shireen Qudosi, New York Times
May 3, 2017
Female Genital Mutilation (FGM) is the horrific act of cutting off a young girl’s clitoris. Often seen as a humanitarian and women’s rights crisis in third-world countries, FGM hit home in the United States recently when an American-born Muslim doctor was arrested and charged with committing FGM on two girls. Further investigation has also led to charges against a second Muslim doctor and points to his wife as a co-conspirator... [MORE]
FGM: A Modern-Day Scourge in the United States
by Liriel Higa, New York Times
May 22, 2015
When Jaha Dukureh created a Change.org petition to tackle female genital mutilation, or “female circumcision,” in the United States last year, her goal was modest: 1,000 supporters. Dukureh, then 24, who herself underwent genital cutting as a girl in Gambia and now lives in Atlanta, wanted an updated federal estimate of the women who have had the procedure or are at risk of it... [MORE]
A Fight as U.S. Girls Face Genital Cutting Abroad
by Julie Turkewitz, New York Times
June 10, 2014
Last summer, an American-born teenager of Somali descent fled her parents’ home in a suburb here after she discovered that a coming vacation to Somalia would include a sacred rite of passage: the cutting of her genitalia. In Guinea, a New Yorker escaped to the American Embassy after an aunt told her that her family trip would involve genital cutting... [MORE]