Why we should be concerned about UK female genital mutilation laws and associated monitoring and reporting systems: a reply to ‘The prosecution of Dawoodi Bohra women’ by Richard Shweder

Abstract

UK female genital mutilation laws discriminate against specific women and infantilise them. Female genital mutilation types accord with those of the politically partisan World Health Organisation, but new instances reported are genital piercings. Most female genital mutilation seen in the National Health Service is less severe than male circumcision, which is not illegal. The laws, monitoring and reporting systems need reviewing with a view to decriminalising female genital mutilation.

Introduction: gender equality in Abrahamic circumcision – why or why not?

“…Padela (2022) calls for the inclusion of social scientists, public policy experts and other relevant scholars in Islamic bioethical deliberations in addition to clinicians and jurists. Then, Brid Hehir (2022) argues that the UK legal context discriminates against women from specific ethnic backgrounds in its criminalisation of FGC and permission of forms of labiaplasty. Next, Juliet Rogers (2022) shows how the High Court of Australia's failure to consider equivalence disregards women's agency towards God and community in its subscription to the view that the body of a woman becomes injured -a remnant -when she is circumcised, as opposed to the male body, which becomes part of the nation through circumcision.…”