(Detroit News) A U.S. House committee on Wednesday advanced bipartisan legislation meant to fix the federal law prohibiting female genital cutting.
The bill was introduced in response to a ruling by a federal judge in Michigan who declared the statute unconstitutional in 2018.
That ruling dealt a blow to the first-of-its-kind prosecution involving a Detroit-area doctor charged with cutting the genitals of two 7-year-old girls at a Livonia clinic.
Last year, the Trump administration determined it could not successfully appeal the judge’s decision, saying the statute’s wording was too weak to withstand challenge by the defendants.
Female genital mutilation, often abbreviated as FGM, is the ritual removal, scraping or cauterizing of all or part of a girl’s genitals for non-medical reasons.
