(Free Beacon) Democratic Senate candidate Sara Gideon repeatedly killed bills to outlaw female genital mutilation during her tenure as the speaker of the Maine House of Representatives.
Gideon leveraged her leadership position in the Democrat-controlled legislature to kill two separate bills that would have criminalized the practice of severing the clitoris of infant girls and sewing their vaginas shut. Instead, the Democrat supported a different law that would have funnelled $150,000 to her political allies to educate Mainers about the practice instead of criminalizing it, according to a former state legislator who spearheaded the push to stop the mutilation.
Under Gideon’s leadership, Maine Democrats argued that the bill was racist toward the state’s large immigrant community from Somalia, a country where the practice is “nearly universal” according to the United Nations. The Democrats also argued that the practice rarely takes place in Maine and is already outlawed by existing federal and local laws.
