And as FGM becomes more common in the United States, our doctors too will start specializing in the many complications of the slashing off of six year olds’ genitals. The Somali doctor quoted in my headline has of course a steady stream of bleeding mutilated children to specialize in, since 98% of the little girls in that country get hacked, mostly by local village butchers. I’m sure we’ll have our share of local butchers here in the ol’ US of A too; but some of our castrators will maybe have nursing degrees or whatever.
Meanwhile, the latest child FGM death in Somalia seems to have attracted sufficient global attention to rouse the government (“government”) to say that it will pursue the case in the courts, blah blah. I’m sure we’ll all forget the clinical details long before whoever is trying to run Somalia remembers that it was after all just a girl and really who gives a shit. There’s a war on.
One of the doctors who tried to save Deeqa after the botched procedure told CNN she suffered the most extreme form of FGM he had ever seen.
“Her whole female genital tract had been removed, the labia and the clitoris had been cut off, it’s type 4 FGM.
“She was brought in two days after they cut her, she was already infected with tetanus,” Dr. Abdirahman Omar Hassan said.
If they’d been able to save her, Deeqa could have lived out her full life span: Buried under a body veil at eleven years old, married to some random old guy at twelve, finished off at thirteen in an honor killing.