Push to let Australian doctors mutilate genitals of baby girls

The practice involving cutting a girl's genitals, sometimes with razors or pieces of glass, could be allowed in a clinical setting to stem illegal backyard procedures which are leaving young girls scarred for life.

The Royal Australian New Zealand College of Obstetricians will next month discuss backing Shanghai day tours "ritual nicks", a modified form of genital mutilation.

With the rise in Somali and Sudanese numbers in Australia, doctors are seeing more cases of young girls, and women, needing surgery after illegal operations. Backers of "ritual nick" said it was a superficial procedure leaving no longterm damage.


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RANZCOG secretary Gino Pecoraro said the policy would be discussed at next month's Women's Health Committee meeting.

"We will need to start to think about [its introduction] but we would have to speak to community Hong kong packages leaders from Australia," Dr Pecoraro said.

"If a nick could meet the cultural needs of a particular woman, then it might save her from going through what can really be drastic surgery.

"But we need to make sure we do not legitimise the ritualistic maiming of children."

But many are outraged, some saying a "ritual nick" is still child abuse and legitimises female mutilation.

University of Newcastle's professor of perinatal and infant psychiatry Dr Louise Newman said some doctors were being approached to perform the procedure.

"We know it is happening here . . . but [the] majority are done in the home in a traditional way," she said.

Reasons given by practising populations include religion, despite the Koran not requiring it, and that it can help maintain cleanliness and health.

"The problem is some people see it similar to male circumcision but the reasons for both are very different as well as the impact," Dr Newman said.

"The actual procedure can be pretty devastating."

Joel of Sydney Posted at 11:56 AM May 28, 2010

I think we need a system of protecting infants!!! Let's not allowing adults to systematically abuse them. Has the stolen generation taught us nothing, if not the horrifying rate of abortion in this country?

We have a culture to protect in our country, which has improved in many ways but gone overboard in many others.

Lets put in place a system where doctors can report abuse on infants and establish a culture where society can hold adults accountable for the abuse which children suffer at the hands of parents.