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Federal Law Prohibiting Female Genital Mutilation Ruled Unconstitutional

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Female genital mutilation will remain a crime that doesn’t get prosecuted in America after a federal judge tossed criminal charges brought against two doctors, according to The Washington Post. The two doctors from Michigan and six other people were charged last year because of plans to mutilate the genitals of nine girls, but the federal judge found that Congress “overstepped its bounds” with the law that is supposed to ban female genital mutilation.

 

Female genital mutilation is still a problem in some areas of the world, which is why it is a federal crime in America. The doctors were the first people charged in over two decades for the alleged female genital mutilation plans. Nobody had ever been charged. has been a federal crime in the United States for more than two decades, the Michigan doctors were the first to be charged under the law for committing a practice that the U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement feels “will hopefully deal a critical blow to stamping out this inhumane practice.” The United Nations condemns the act as a human rights violation. The Washington Post reports that girls in Asia, Africa, and the Middle East most commonly fall victim to the procedure, and over 200 million women have had their genitalia mutilated, according to the World Health Organization.

 

U.S. District Judge Bernard Friedman threw cold water on those hopes for justice though after ruling that the federal ban is unconstitutional. One of his main arguments was that states needed to handle this issue and that it fell out of the jurisdiction of Congress. He dismissed the majority of charges against the doctors.

 

The Washington Post explained how lawyers for one of the doctors got charges dismissed on the argument “that Congress did not have the authority to prohibit female genital mutilation. The judge agreed, ruling that the law could not be permitted under the Commerce Clause of the Constitution.” The lawyers added in a statement that “yesterday’s decision by the court is exactly what our justice system is designed to do.” Lawyers Shannon Smith and Molly Blythe continued the statement by saying “the judge found Congress, through the United States Constitution, lacked authority to enact the FGM statute. The law warranted this decision and we are happy with it.”

 

“There is nothing commercial or economic about FGM,” Friedman said.

 

Because the judge believed the government couldn’t show how female genital mutilation is a commercial activity or interstate market, he ruled that Congress couldn’t make such a law.

“This is not a market, but a small number of alleged victims,” Friedman said. “If there is an interstate market for FGM, why is this the first time the government has ever brought charges under this 1996 statute?” He also had a rebuttal to the argument that the law had a medical basis, saying that female genital mutilation is “a form of physical assault, not anything approaching a healthcare service.”

 

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