A reader writes:
Thank you for helping to bring attention to the issue of Female Genital Mutilation (FGM). My hero, Edna Adan, has made it among her life missions to help to eradicate this evil. In Somaliland, the breakaway independent republic in the Northeast of Somalia, she has built a maternity hospital that educates local women about FGM in the hope that their daughters will be spared. In this region, as elsewhere, it is the women who enforce and carry out this practice.
I was present when Edna spoke last year to several hundred students at the University of California in Santa Barbara. Edna shocked the audience when she told of an 11-year-old girl brought to Edna’s hospital. The child, born with Down Syndrome, was near death.
She had been bleeding for several hours following a botched FGM procedure. Through the heroic efforts of the staff, her life was saved. But so much was cut away, Edna said, that the girl would never be able even to control her bladder. "Cut to the bone."
After a week, she was released back into the care of her mother, but first Edna took her aside. "Your daughter already had Down Syndrome. Didn’t she have enough problems? How could you do this to her?" But the mother was adamant, maintaining she had done what was necessary.
In Somaliland, in the Horn of Africa, at least 98% of girls are mutilated. And, of these, 99% are mutilated in the worst way, Type 3 FGM. "Excision of part or all of the external genitalia and stitching together of the exposed walls of the labia majora, leaving only a small hole (typically less than 5cm) to permit the passage of urine and vaginal secretions."
The Dish 