Female circumcision kills mothers and babies

In another case of science proving the obvious, the World Health Organization released a study showing the dangerous effects and even fatal results of genital mutilation in women.

Female circumcision heightens childbirth risks: WHO

GENEVA (Reuters) - Female circumcision, performed on as many as 3 million girls each year, complicates childbirth later in life and causes higher mortality among their babies, the World Health Organization (WHO) said on Friday.

In a new report, the United Nations agency said women who had undergone the practice, also known as female genital mutilation, were up to 70 percent more vulnerable to potentially fatal hemorrhage after delivery than those who had not.

Its study, involving some 28,000 women at obstetric centers in six African countries where the practice is common, said babies born to circumcised women were as much as 55 percent more likely to die during or immediately after childbirth.

I started writing out a whole rant but I deleted it. Genital mutilation is so horrifying to me I was sputtering but not making very coherent points.

Very few things enrage me to the point of violence – and I can almost always see someone's point even if I completely disagree with them – but this is one of those things that I have absolutely no empathy for. I would happily strangle the fearful, cowardly males who came up with this procedure and embedded it so thoroughly in the psyche of their people. (Except of course they're already dead, as this practice goes back at least a thousand years.)