Taking Female Genital Cutting Out of US Shadows Arshi Qureshi

ACTIVISM, SEXUALITIES, 12 May 2025

By  Arshi Qureshi

The practice of female genital mutilation is mostly associated with dozens of countries in Africa and the Mideast, but the reality is that millions of women and girls in some 94 countries are victimized by it every year. This includes the United States, where 41 states prohibit the practice and Connecticut is pushing to join that list soon.

“One of the most pervasive misconceptions is that FGM/C” — female genital mutilation/cutting — “is limited to African countries,” said Shivangi Misra, the global legal adviser at Equality Now, a US-based organization that advocates for protecting women and girls across the world. “It is not a religious mandate — it is a patriarchal social norm in the guise of ritual and shame.”

The ritual, which ranges from pricking to infibulation — the partial or total removal of external genitalia — is practiced to control female sexuality and promote modesty. Unicef’s data from 2024 estimates that 230 million women and girls worldwide have undergone FGM/C, a 15 percent increase from 200 million in 2016. This includes 144 million females in Africa, 80 million in Asia, 6 million in the Mideast and others in small communities, driven by population growth. No global estimate was published from 2016 to last year.

The World Health Organization has recently urged steps to curtail the rising “medicalization” of FGM and to encourage health workers to stop the practice, according to a new guideline. (The Trump administration withdrew from the WHO in January.)

In the US, a 2016 study by the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention estimated that 513,000 women and girls were at risk or have experienced cutting, but that number is considered outdated by experts because of underreporting. Besides Connecticut, Alaska, Alabama, Arkansas, Hawaii, Mississippi, Montana, Nebraska, New Mexico, South Carolina, Vermont and Washington lack state bans on FGM.

In Connecticut, approximately 2,658 women and girls were potentially at risk of or had undergone FGM/C in 2013, including 1,128 under age 18, according to the Population Reference Bureau’s 2016 report. The Connecticut Coalition to End FGM/C, part of a national network, estimates that this figure grew nearly 50 percent to almost 4,000 by 2021, though no formal studies confirm this increase.

Zehra Patwa, a Connecticut resident and outgoing member of the advisory board of Sahiyo, an American organization that opposes FGM/C in Asian and other communities in the country, discovered this reality in 2012 through a documentary featuring her cousin’s cutting experience at age seven in India.

“This was a complete shock to me, because I had never heard of this in my community. Nobody had ever mentioned it or even whispered about it,” Patwa said in an interview with PassBlue. Learning that her cousin was cut during a childhood trip, she added: “I refused to believe that FGM/C could be happening in my Bohra community, but as she [her cousin] kept talking, I realized she spoke the truth.”

Speaking with 80 women in her Dawoodi Bohra community, a Shia Muslim sect rooted in western India, Patwa found that each had been cut and recalled the trauma they experienced. (She has been cut, too.)

“Except for one person who had not been cut, every single person had a very vivid and painful memory,” she said. “The trauma was so ingrained in their being that they remembered the tiniest details about the time and place they were cut.”

Cutting persists in US diaspora communities like the Dawoodi Bohras as well as African immigrant groups, particularly those from Somalia and Ethiopia, according to the FGM/C Research Initiative. It also occurs in some conservative Christian groups in the Midwest, according to a new Equality Now report.

State Rep. Jillian Gilchrest (D-Conn.) introduced House Bill 6596 in February, titled “An Act Concerning the Prevention of Female Genital Mutilation.” She was inspired by the Connecticut Coalition to End FGM/C. The coalition has advocated since 2021 for laws to criminalize the practice while emphasizing education, survivor support and culturally sensitive language.

Mariya Taher, who is a victim of cutting and a Sahiyo co-founder, said to PassBlue, “We wanted a law that reflected the complexity of the issue, not just punishment.”

The proposed bill is likely to be voted on by May 7, when the legislative session ends, according to Patwa, although advocates are pushing for amendments to strengthen it before it passes. It proposes civil remedies for survivors, mandatory reporting by professionals, training for healthcare providers and community education using survivor-centered terms to help foster dialogue on the topic.

“To build trust and include voices from all communities.” Patwa said, referring to the bill. “It’s a violation. We must protect girls from this.”

Connecticut is one of nine US states without a state-level FGM/C ban, though there has been a federal ban since 1996.

“State laws govern local police, healthcare, social services, making local governments best placed to raise awareness, create resources and prosecute cases,” Taher said.

Despite the federal FGM/C ban, Connecticut’s lack of a state law limits local enforcement, prevention programs and survivor protections, leaving women and girls vulnerable.

In Michigan in 2017, federal prosecutors charged two Dawoodi Bohra doctors and four others with performing FGM/C on at least nine minors from Michigan, Minnesota and Illinois at a Detroit-area clinic. It was the first federal FGM/C case under the 1996 US law.

However, in November 2018, US District Judge Bernard Friedman dismissed the FGM charges, ruling that the law criminalizing FGM was unconstitutional. He said that Congress had overstepped its authority: FGM, he said, was a “local criminal activity” that should be regulated by states, not the federal government.

Because of the ruling, the federal charges related to FGM in the Michigan case were dropped against most defendants.

Taher said the current draft of the proposed Connecticut bill “focuses on only criminalizing the act,” lacking robust civil remedies and education programs. The gap raises concerns that political debates could jeopardize the bill’s passage, as in past efforts.

Past debates on such a bill involved supporters who were associated with far-right groups, Taher said, including some with explicitly xenophobic agendas. “I couldn’t align with that,” she added. The coalition therefore rebuilt a survivor-centered, nonpartisan approach, navigating challenges posed by politically conservative agendas that conflated cutting with gender-affirming care.

Some conservative lawmakers view both matters as harmful, a stance that has been amplified by the Trump administration’s push to restrict trans healthcare. “FGM/C is a human rights violation. Gender-affirming care supports individuals’ well-being,” Misra of Equality Now said. Linking cutting to trans healthcare risks alienating liberal legislators wary of bills being misused against trans youth, advocates say.

The UNFPA-Unicef program on  eliminating FGM, active since 2008, estimates that $2.1 billion is needed by 2030 to end the practice in 31 high-priority countries, but current funding falls far short. Cultural pressures also keep the practice of FGM in the dark.

“My mother was told to do it and not ask why,” Patwa said. Her mother arranged for Patwa’s cutting by elders who believed it ensured modesty and protected a girl’s honor. “She didn’t know that she could say no.”

The emotional toll lingers.

“Some people told me they didn’t enjoy intimacy because they felt fear and shame because of what had been done to them as a child,” Patwa added. A Sahiyo study found that 80 percent of Bohra respondents underwent cutting, with 82 percent opposing its continuation.

Dr. A. Renee Bergstrom, an 80-year-old FGM survivor from South Dakota, was cut at age three by a doctor in a Seventh-Day Adventist community, supposedly to curb the urge to masturbate. “I remember the pain,” she said in an Equality Now report. “I carried a secret that wasn’t mine to bear.”

Now, she educates medical students about the practice in some Christian communities in the US.

For many survivors, the fight is personal.

“Breaking that silence takes courage,” Dr. Bergstrom said, “but it’s the only way to create change.”

This article originally appeared on Transcend Media Service (TMS) on 12 May 2025.

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