Michigan House Take Tough Approach To Female Mutilation

Spurred by a historic federal court case against two Metro Detroit doctors accused of performing female genital mutilation, the Michigan Legislature is on track to approve tougher sanctions against both the doctors performing the internationally condemned procedure and parents who transport their children to doctors’ offices to have it done.

Two physicians, Dr. Jumana Nagarwala, of Northville, and Dr. Fakhruddin Attar, of Farmington Hills, have been charged in what the Justice Department says is the first case of its kind. Attar’s wife, Faida Attar, also was charged with conspiring to perform the controversial procedure on two 7-year-old girls from Minnesota. Multiple girls from Michigan also underwent the procedure, the Justice Department has said.

FGM has been a federal felony punishable by up to five years in prison for two decades, but the law prohibiting the practice has never been tested in court. The three defendants are members of Dawoodi Bohra, a small Muslim sect in India whose members worship locally at a mosque in Farmington Hills.

The state Senate approved legislation earlier this month that would make FGM a felony punishable by up to 15 years in prison and sent it to the House for consideration. The House Law and Justice Committee heard testimony Tuesday morning on the bill package. (For more local news, click here to sign up for real-time news alerts and newsletters from Detroit Patch, click here to find your local Michigan Patch. Also, follow us on Facebook, and if you have an iPhone, click here to get the free Patch iPhone app.)

The House legislation, sponsored by Rep. Michele Hoitenga, a Republican from Manton, and Rep. Stephanie Chang, a Detroit Democrat, duplicates the Senate versions, but also would provide for legal recourse for victims, who are often young when they undergo it and don’t fully understand it.

“This has to be stopped,” said Rep. Klint Kesto, a Republican from Commerce Township who heads the House Law and Justice Committee, according to a report in The Detroit News. “It’s underground. We don’t know about it. … It’s happening to young girls that don’t know how to come out later … and so I think that we have to address it.”

The house legislation would also require the Michigan Department of Health and Human Services to develop and administer to new the state’s new immigrant populations an education program the dangers of FGM, which is designed to curb the sexuality of women and girls. Police would also be trained to spot signs of female genital mutilation under the House legislation.

Even with tougher penalties in Michigan, stopping the entrenched cultural and religious practice may be difficult and drive the practice deeper underground, Michigan Radio reported.

“If you ban it, it doesn’t mean that people won’t still try to do it,” Frank Ravitch, chair of the Law and Religion Department at Michigan State University School of Law, told Michigan Radio.

When the African nation of Senegal criminalized FGM, leaders were met with a backlash from families and communities and the practice became more entrenched among those for whom FGM is a cultural way of life, Kathy Wadner, a biological anthropologist who researched what happened in Senegal, told Michigan Radio.

Though the three Metro Detroit residents accused in the federal case are members of the Dawoodi Bohra sect known to people who bring their daughters to southeast Michigan for the procedure, FGM is not a Muslim practice, said Lori Post, an associate professor at the Yale School of Medicine and director of the Buehler Center for Health Policy and Economics at Northwestern University, The Detroit News reported.

One of the highest rates of FGM occurs in Ethiopia, which has a majority Christian population, and it was also practiced in the United States in the 1800s before Middle Easterner emigrated.

“Please stop blaming Muslims,” Post said. “The majority of Muslims do not practice FGM.”

Michigan could become a national leader in laws against FGM, Post said.

Sen. Margaret O’Brien, a Portage Republican who sponsored legislation in the Senate, began working on the issue before the Justice Department filed charges against Nagarwala and the Attars.

“There are no health benefits to this,” O’Brien said. “There’s no good that comes out of it, and in fact female genital mutilation is designed for two purposes: One is to oppress girls and women, and the second is to make sure the future husband has complete control over them.”

Photo by Christine via Flickr Commons