Cutting Young Girls Isn’t Religious Freedom
Cutting Young Girls Isn’t Religious Freedom
by Kristina Arriaga, Wall Street Journal, August 24, 2017
Earlier this year, a 7-year-old girl from Minnesota entered an examination room at a clinic just outside of Detroit. Thinking this was a regular visit, she allowed the doctor to remove her pants and underwear and place her on the examination table. Suddenly, while two women in the clinic held her hands, the physician spread her legs and cut her clitoris. Two months later she told investigators the pain ran down to her ankles and she could barely walk.
In April Dr. Jumana Nagarwala, who allegedly performed the procedure, was charged with conspiracy to commit female genital mutilation. Dr. Fakhruddin Attar, the owner of the since-closed clinic, was also charged. Investigators suspect Ms. Nagarwala may be involved in 100 other cases, and the trial starts in October. This marks the first time a female genital mutilation case is going to federal court. The lawyers for the Michigan physician will argue the girl “underwent a benign religious procedure.” This is a dangerous hypocrisy with far-reaching consequences.
Female genital mutilation has been illegal in the U.S. since 1996. Yet a 2012 study in the journal Public Health Reports estimates that more than 500,000 girls in the U.S. have undergone the procedure or are at risk. These girls live all over the country, with larger concentrations in California, New York and Minnesota. Most go through this process in secret, and only 25 states have laws that criminalize the procedure. In Maine, the American Civil Liberties Union has opposed a bill to do so on the ground that “the risk of mutilation isn’t worth expanding Maine’s criminal code.”…
The physician’s lawyers announced they will craft a religious-freedom defense. And they may be astute enough to get away with it. The all-star team includes constitutional law scholar and O.J. Simpson lawyer Alan Dershowitz, along with Mayer Morganroth, who represented assisted-suicide champion Dr. Jack Kevorkian for more than 15 years. They are funded by an international Muslim organization called Dawat-e-Hadiyah….
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The major concern about this case is that if the defence should be successful, then it leaves it open for criminal acts which are permitted by a religion, such as wife-beating, honour killing, stoning for adultery, etc will be permitted as well due to the precedent being established. I am truly disappointed with Alan Dershowitz in joining the defence team, but then lawyers do need to make a living don't they? However, I am aware that it is the duty of a criminal lawyer to defend those who are convicted of a crime, and in this case, that is the situation.
It does remind me of an incident from when I was a practising lawyer in Toronto (but a commercial lawyer, not a criminal one) when one of my best friends who happened to be the Public Defender in Toronto at time, was representing a number of prostitutes who were in court, and I was there to watch my friend. As each girl was being tried, he pleaded them not guilty, one after the other. After about 6 or 7 of them had been dealt with by the Magistrate, he asked my friend: "Mr M****, surely SOME of these girls must be guilty of the offence but you are pleading every one of them 'Not guilty'". My friend replied, "Your Worship, when I went into Law School my mother made me promise that I would never associate with criminals, so it's a matter of principle that NONE of these girls are guilty." The whole court, including the Magistrate could not stop laughing.
In the same vein... a little girl wearing a chador is not religious freedom... and when that little girl has been wearing it for two decades and is now an adult... can she really decide "independently"?
Astonishing, isn't it, how these rules affecting women are always decided by... men?