University Diaries » On female genital mutilation:

Take heart. For two reasons.

1.) Johns Hopkins University med school grad Jumana Nagarwala will not, it’s true, be convicted on FGM itself – because a judge concluded the federal law against it is too weakly written. However:

The [Nagarwala] case … isn’t dead without the female genital mutilation charges. The defendants still face conspiracy and obstruction charges that could send them to prison for 20-30 years, if convicted, though more appeals are in the pipeline.

UD takes further comfort in the thought that Nagarwala’s life, with years and years of appeals, and her name entirely besmirched, is as ruined as the lives of the hundred-plus seven-year-old girls her slash-happy ways ruined.

2.) And even with passionate clit-cutting defenders like Alan Dershowitz supporting her, there’s the business of the United States Congress intervening in the whole disgusting mess.

In a move that could revive Detroit’s historic female genital mutilation prosecution, Congress has intervened in the case, saying the Department of Justice gave up too easily on the law that makes the cutting practice illegal.

… “The Trump Administration’s sudden refusal to advance legal arguments to defend a long-standing federal statute criminalizing this horrific act disrespects the health and futures of vulnerable women and girls,” House Speaker Nancy Pelosi said in a statement Wednesday. “Once again, the House is called upon to defend the constitutionality of a duly enacted law and to protect people’s lives.”

The war to keep the United States free of barbaric practices (Dershowitz is also way keen on the mutilation of infant boys’ genitals and woe betide the evil anti-semites who’d try to ban that) is a war, not a battle. Congress will do its part; increasingly strong state laws against FGM will do theirs, etc. The drawn-out appeals process in Michigan will keep Nagarwala’s name and her crimes in the news. We’ll get there.

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