Earlier this month, as you no doubt have heard, the American Academy of Pediatrics moderated its policy on female circumcision. As a preventive measure to keep families from taking their daughters outside the country for full circumcision procedures, its committee on bioethics suggested that doctors perform a “ritual nick.” Right or wrong, it provides plenty of fodder for the hard right. For example, at Jihad Watch, blogger Marisol wrote:
This decision — to approve of the idea of a “ritualized nick” on a girl’s genitalia — is as pointless as it is dangerous. For those who insist on following prescribed degrees of mutilation, which are primarily enforced in Muslim countries, a token gesture will not be enough to keep them from traveling overseas or seeking a more severe form of the practice wherever they can. And the girl still suffers the trauma of a ritualized sexual assault — potentially twice, if, for example, the “nick” is the parents’ ruse to throw health care providers off the trail of further intended damage, or if they simply change their minds.
It’s probably academic since U.S. federal law prevents “any nonmedical procedure performed on the genitals” of females. But do Focal Points readers agree with Jihad Watch in this instance? Is this cultural relativism run amok? Or does the American Academy of Pediatrics have its heart in the right place?