Female Circumcision

The more I have begun to build relationships with the women living in my area the more I hear their stories about being circumsized as a child. It is now known as FGM, Female Genital Mutilation. The only way this will be brought to a stop is through prayer, education, and awareness. After talking to a teenager who lost so much blood and almost died she has said she will refuse to have this done to her own daughter someday. My hope is more girls will stand up against this traditional practice and soon it will just be memory of how the way things once were. While the below information is gruesome I think it is necessary to share.

"The UN estimates that this practice has been performed on 130 million girls and women. At least 2 million girls are at risk each year of being the next victims, that is 6,000 a day. The operations are usually performed in primitive circumstances by a midwife or village woman. They use no anesthetics. They'll cut the girl using whatever instrument they can lay their hands on: razor blades, knives, scissors, broken glass, sharp stones, and in some regions- their teeth.

The process ranges in severity by geographic location and cultural practice. The most minimal damage is cutting away the hood of the clitoris, which will prohibit the girl from enjoying sex for the rest of her life. At the other end of the spectrum is infibulation, which is performed on 80 percent of the women in Somalia. The aftermath of infibulation includes the immediate complications of shock, infection, septicemia, HIV, and Hepatitus B. Long-term complications include chronic and recurrent urinary and pelvic infections that can lead to sterility, cysts and abscesses around the vulva, painful neuromas, increasingly difficult urination, dysmenorrhea, the pooling of menstrual blood in the abdomen, frigidity, depression, and death"

Taken from the Dessert Flower by Waris Dirie UN Ambassador.