By BI: The American Pediatric Association considered this “compromise” several years ago, but rejected it in the end. Now two more American non-Muslim gynecologists doctors think Western countries should legally permit Muslim immigrant communities to surgically “nick” young girls’ vaginas as an alternative to full-scale female genital mutilation.

UK Daily Mail  Such a “compromise” could allow groups to honor cultural or religious prescripts while saving millions of girls from invasive and disfiguring genital slashing practised in many African and Middle Eastern cultures, the two ‘doctors’ stated in the Journal of Medical Ethics.

“We are not arguing that any procedure on the female genitalia is desirable,” said Kavita Arora of the Case Western Reserve University in Cleveland and Allan Jacobs of Stony Brook University in New York state. “Rather, we only argue that certain procedures ought to be tolerated by liberal societies”, which have outlawed such practices but host Muslim immigrants for whom it is part of their culture.

Efforts to enforce an outright ban on female genital mutilation (FGM) have often had the opposite effect — driving the practice underground and putting women at even greater risk, said the duo. But many peers immediately dismissed the idea.

According to Arianne Shahvisi of the University of Sussex ethics department in Britain: “One must not cause irreversible changes to the body of another person without their consent.”

Arora and Jacobs, however, contended that a one-size-fits-all approach ignored that many people believed the procedure to be a means of achieving “moral or ritual purity” for their child. Vaginal cutting is widely regarded as a libido-reducer, intended in certain cultures to keep a woman chaste.

According to the World Health Organization, about three million girls a year fall victim to genital mutilation. It can cause urinary difficulties, cysts and infection, infertility and complications in childbirth.

Arora and Jacobs have proposed new sub-categories of genital cutting.

Category One would entail procedures with no long-lasting effect on the appearance or function of the genitalia, such as a “small nick” in the skin.

Procedures under Category Two may affect appearance, but not reproductive capacity or sexual enjoyment, they said. This could include removing the “hood” or skin-fold covering the clitoris or trimming the labia (labiaplasty).

The first two categories, they said, should be reclassified as female genital “alteration” (FGA) rather than “mutilation”. (A rose by any other name…) “Indeed, they are equivalent or less extensive than orthodontia, breast implantation or even the elective labiaplasty for which affluent women pay thousands of dollars.”