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Biden Admin Calls Female Genital Mutilation ‘Child Abuse,’ Promotes ‘Bottom Surgery’ to Teenage Girls

February 9, 2023

The Biden administration, which has sued states that ban surgeries that remove the healthy reproductive anatomy of underage girls, has announced its support for the International Day of Zero Tolerance for Female Genital Mutilation.

“The Department of Justice is committed to supporting efforts to end Female Genital Mutilation, including by prosecuting those who violate the federal law banning FGM and by providing support to survivors of this harmful practice,” said Assistant Attorney General Kenneth A. Polite Jr. of the Justice Department’s Criminal Division on Monday. “FGM is a form of gender-based violence and child abuse, which will not be tolerated in the United States.”

Female genital mutilation (FGM), sometimes known as female circumcision, proliferates in sub-Saharan African and Arab states, often to fulfill Islamic concepts referenced in the hadiths. An estimated 513,000 women and girls living in America stand at risk of FGM, which has entered the United States largely through Muslim immigration. The U.S. government, the United Nations, and the World Health Organization mutually define female genital mutilation as “any partial or total removal of the external female genitalia or any other injury of the female genital organs for non-medical reasons.” The process, sometimes known as female circumcision, involves “piercing, cutting, removing, or sewing closed all or part of a girl’s or woman’s external genitals.”

While opposing the permanently disfiguring custom, the Biden administration has filed litigation against states that have attempted to protect girls from transgender surgeries that permanently remove their entire reproductive anatomy.

The Cleveland Clinic explains that female genital mutation surgery, euphemistically called “gender-affirming care” or “bottom surgery,” may consist of numerous procedures, including:

  • Hysterectomy, which removes the uterus.
  • Oophorectomy to remove the ovaries.
  • Vaginectomy or vaginal mucosal ablation to remove all or part of the vagina and seal the opening.

FGM and “gender-affirming surgery” share other traits in common. The U.S. government explains the main side effects of female genital mutilation include infections, developing fistulas, and difficulty urinating or having sexual intercourse.

Female genital mutation surgery for girls who identify as transgender carry similar side effects. Up to 68% of women develop a fistula during the final step of the process, known as phalloplasty. Urethral strictures, which make urination difficult, occur in up to 64% of such surgeries. A 2014 study found 87% of women who underwent genital reconstruction surgery developed an infection, a far higher rate than men. Artificial male genitalia cannot engage in sexual intercourse without an additional surgery, which carries an additional “risk of infection and implant rejection,” according to Johns Hopkins Medicine. The area will lose all sensation until the nerves regenerate, anywhere from three weeks to a year later, JHM adds, and “[a]s nerves regenerate and strengthen connections, you might experience shooting pain, tingling or electrical sensations.”

In Monday’s press release, the Biden administration touted the steps it has taken to fight FGM. “The FBI now includes information on FGM in the annual mandatory child abuse training for all FBI employees in hopes of further educating the workforce. The FBI’s International Human Rights Unit released educational reports on FGM for pediatricians and for educators.”

Federal law enforcement agencies ask public authorities and non-governmental organizations to report “if they suspect a child is in imminent danger of being subjected to FGM.”

Yet as recently as his 2023 State of the Union Address, Biden urged Congress to “pass the bipartisan Equality Act to ensure LGBTQ Americans, especially transgender young people, can live with safety and dignity.” The Equality Act, which raises gender identity to the same civil rights status as race and religion, could force Christian doctors to perform gender-reassignment surgeries.

That caps a long list of Biden advocacy on behalf of giving the gender-reassignment industry access to children’s bodies. As part of its Pride Month activities in June 2021, the Biden administration’s Justice Department joined a lawsuit against Arkansas’s SAFE Act, which protects minors from gender reassignment surgery.

In March 2022, President Biden called Texas efforts to investigate parents who subject minors to transgender procedures or surgeries for child abuse “cynical and dangerous.” HHS Secretary Xavier Becerra deemed the state’s actions “discriminatory and unconscionable.” And Kristen Clarke, the assistant attorney general for civil rights in Biden’s Justice Department, wrote a letter to all 50 state attorneys general that laws protecting minor children from life-altering genital removal surgery might violate the Fourteenth Amendment.

The following month, the Department of Justice also sued the state of Alabama for its Vulnerable Child Compassion and Protection (VCAP) law, which prohibits anyone from subjecting children to transgender surgeries.

HHS Assistant Secretary for Health Rachel Levine, who identifies as transgender, has told pediatricians they should be missionaries on behalf of transgender procedures for minors. “The positive value of gender-affirming care is not in serious scientific or medical dispute,” said Levine last April 30 at Texas Christian University. “Gender-affirming care is medical care. It is mental health care. It is suicide prevention care.”

International studies show that gender-reassignment surgery does not necessarily reduce, and may increase, suicides among people struggling with gender dysphoria.

People promoting cross-sex hormone injections and surgical interventions to remove healthy organs “lack the understanding that a child is not a small adult,” Professor of Youth Psychiatry Riittakerttu Kaltiala at Finland’s Tampere University recently told Finland’s largest newspaper. “Mentally healthy young people who experience their gender in a way that differs from their biological body are not automatically suicidal.” Claiming that they are is “purposeful disinformation, the spreading of which is irresponsible.”

Ben Johnson is senior reporter and editor at The Washington Stand.