BMJ 1995;311:1088-1089 (21 October)

Letters

Professionals should not collude with abusive systems

EDITOR,--J A Black and G D Debelle do not go far enough in their article on female genital mutilation.1 They state, "genital mutilation is a form of child abuse, though this term should not be used when discussing the procedure with families as it would be greatly resented." This suggests that the feelings of the families and doctors should be given precedence over the feelings of the child(ren) being permanently mutilated. This represents collusion with an abusive system, which, unfortunately, is not unusual when children's feelings are concerned.2

They state that "there is little point in prosecuting parents for something which has already occurred." If this principle was applied wholesale there would be no point in having a law prohibiting the act, nor would any prosecutions be brought for acts of sexual abuse, of which genital mutilation is a gross example.

In addition, they state that "genital mutilation differs from . . . [Full text of this article]


Add to CiteULike CiteULike   Add to Complore Complore   Add to Connotea Connotea   Add to Del.icio.us Del.icio.us   Add to Digg Digg   Add to Reddit Reddit   Add to StumbleUpon StumbleUpon   Add to Technorati Technorati    What's this?

Relevant Article

Female genital mutilation in Britain
J A Black and G D Debelle
BMJ 1995 310: 1590-1592. [Extract] [Full Text]

Access jobs at BMJ Careers
Whats new online at Student BMJ