- Wed Oct 21, 2009 8:50 pm
#7392
2 cm of scar tissue (which is mind-boggling to me); arterial blood; and then this:
May there be more docs trained in this procedure, may they take their skills to those who need them (at the lowest possible cost), is my hope - and my prayer. To be able to offer hope and help to women who've undergone FGM is a work of mercy, not something that should be exploited for material gain.
Edited to add the following quote from the article, which literally brought tears of happiness (for this woman) to my eyes -
Wow. Thank you so much for posting that, bops!bops wrote:This is interesting:
http://www.newsweek.com/id/218692
2 cm of scar tissue (which is mind-boggling to me); arterial blood; and then this:
This (among other things) is why (I think) claims that the risks and negative effects of FGM are exaggerated is completely bogus. Systemic infections that never resolve, constant pain - is this what anyone really wants children and adults to live with? I honestly can't imagine how - or why - anyone who has accurate information would want to take such reckless chances or advise others to do so. The scarring is, as Sila says in the article, far deeper than the physical, though that alone is reason enough to say "No more."....layers of a black, sooty material—the decades-old remnants of the ash poultice the local women had used to stop the bleeding. It had caused a low-grade infection that still hadn't healed—one reason Sila was always in pain.
May there be more docs trained in this procedure, may they take their skills to those who need them (at the lowest possible cost), is my hope - and my prayer. To be able to offer hope and help to women who've undergone FGM is a work of mercy, not something that should be exploited for material gain.
Edited to add the following quote from the article, which literally brought tears of happiness (for this woman) to my eyes -
[/end "activist" rant - it's hard not to say these things, because it's so clear to me, as a woman, how these "procedures" can cause needless - and ongoing - pain and suffering, both physical and psychological.]A California nurse, Ngozi, who was circumcised as a newborn in Nigeria and also had her labia entirely cut away, came to Bowers in August. She is already feeling results, she tells NEWSWEEK. "Before, I would look at my textbook and look at myself and they were two different things. I wasn't even human." Bowers performed not only the clitoral operation but also plastic surgery to create labia for Ngozi, 34. "Now when I look at myself I feel like a woman," says Ngozi, who says she has even experienced orgasms for the first time in her life. "It's beautiful, I just love it, it feels like you're melting. Before it irritated me when my husband tried to touch me, now I reach out to him."