The American Academy of Pediatrics has moderated its policy on female circumcision -- a decision that quickly spurred widespread denunciation from advocacy groups and government officials.
The academy’s committee on bioethics released a new position paper last week, suggesting that doctors perform a “ritual nick” to prevent families from going overseas for full circumcision procedures.
Right now, federal law in the United States prevents “any nonmedical procedure performed on the genitals” of females.
The position statement describes the nick as “a compromise” that could limit the number of young girls forced to endure female genital mutilation in their family’s native country.
An estimated 100 million to 140 million girls and women in 28 countries have experienced female genital mutilation, according to the World Health Organization. In Africa, 3 million girls are still operated on each year.
In the U.S, the change to the American Academy of Pediatrics’ stance occurred just as a members of Congress proposed a bill that would make traveling overseas for the procedure illegal.
“I am sure the academy had only good intentions, but what their recommendation has done is only create confusion about whether FGM is acceptable in any form, and it is the wrong step forward on how best to protect young women and girls,” Rep. Joseph Crowley, D-N.Y., who proposed the bill, said in a statement.
Intact America, an advocacy group that opposes male and female circumcision, released its own press release to denounce the academy’s position.
“We believe in the human rights of all babies to intact bodies, but have been focused on male circumcision because we believed the horror of female genital mutilation had been outlawed forever in the United States,” said Georganne Chapin, Intact America’s director.
Members of the academy’s bioethics committee disagreed, saying the decision came down to cultural sensitivity.
One committee member, Dr. Lainie Friedman Ross, called the nick “a last resort,” but one that’s less likely to be physically or psychologically traumatic. She likened the accompanying pain to ear piercing for young girls.
“If we just told parents, ‘No, this is wrong,’ our concern is they may take their daughters back to their home countries, where the procedure may be more extensive cutting and may even be done without anesthesia, with unsterilized knives or even glass,” she told The New York Times.
Full female circumcisions can cause a myriad of health consequences, including problems urinating, infertility and complications during childbirth.
Internationally, efforts to ban female circumcision have made recent progress. A meeting in Dakar on Monday united officials from 27 African countries, who hope to see the United Nations ban the procedure as a violation of human rights.