Female Genital Mutilation -- a Review and Analysis

How prevalent is the practice of female genital mutilation throughout the world? Why is it done, where is it done, and what are the human rights and morality implications? This paper will examine those questions, and provide information that supplements those issues.

The Literature on Female Genital Mutilation

There are four types of female genital mutilation (FGM), according to an article in the British Journal of Midwifery (Momoh 2004, p. 631): 1) Type 1 is called clitoridectomy, in which the "excision of the clitoral prepuce may also involve the excision of all or part of the clitoris"; 2) Type 2 is the cutting away from the body of the clitoris, but may also involved the excision of "all or part of the tabia minora"; 3) Type 3 is called infibulation, and it involves "excision of part or all of the external genitalia...
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