1st UK prosecution for Female Genital Mutilation "imminent"
Discussion
Those interested in the debate about male circumcision may wish to read the judgement linked to below. It is by Sir James Munby, President of the Family Division of the High Court. I suggest reading from paragraph 55 onwards. The earlier paragraphs deal with the facts.
A Council applied to take children into care because it thought that a young girl either had been or was going to be mutilated. Munby found on the facts that the girl had not been mutilated and that the Council had failed to show that she was at risk of being mutilated He therefore did not have to say anything at all about the issue of male circumcision, but, he did. He concluded that male circumcision is "serious harm":, but that the law tolerates it because, in summary, it is a culturally/religiously embedded practice. The law does not tolerate FGM.
I think that Munby quite deliberately chose to address a point that he did not have to address in order to bring the matter into public debate. It is fairly plain to me that he regards the conclusion forced on him by convention to be absurd, and points the contrast between the social acceptance of male circumcision and the condemnation of FGM for that purpose. What Munby then does is to decline to legislate, as that would overstep the boundary of what a Judge can do. It is not so easy to be Lord Mansfield these days (Lord Mansfield was a great C18 Judge who defied social convention to free a slave, holding slavery to be incompatible with the common law).
For a medical ethical take on this, see the attached article by Dr Brian Earp.
http://www.judiciary.gov.uk/wp-content/uploads/201...
http://blog.practicalethics.ox.ac.uk/2015/02/on-th...
A Council applied to take children into care because it thought that a young girl either had been or was going to be mutilated. Munby found on the facts that the girl had not been mutilated and that the Council had failed to show that she was at risk of being mutilated He therefore did not have to say anything at all about the issue of male circumcision, but, he did. He concluded that male circumcision is "serious harm":, but that the law tolerates it because, in summary, it is a culturally/religiously embedded practice. The law does not tolerate FGM.
I think that Munby quite deliberately chose to address a point that he did not have to address in order to bring the matter into public debate. It is fairly plain to me that he regards the conclusion forced on him by convention to be absurd, and points the contrast between the social acceptance of male circumcision and the condemnation of FGM for that purpose. What Munby then does is to decline to legislate, as that would overstep the boundary of what a Judge can do. It is not so easy to be Lord Mansfield these days (Lord Mansfield was a great C18 Judge who defied social convention to free a slave, holding slavery to be incompatible with the common law).
For a medical ethical take on this, see the attached article by Dr Brian Earp.
http://www.judiciary.gov.uk/wp-content/uploads/201...
http://blog.practicalethics.ox.ac.uk/2015/02/on-th...
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