She Stood at the White House Advocating for Girls. She Won't Say FGM Is Harmful.

Female genital mutilation is not a single procedure. The WHO classifies it in four types, ranging from partial or total removal of the clitoris to the complete sealing of the vaginal opening. What they share is the deliberate removal or injury of healthy genital tissue for non-medical reasons, and a body of documented harm that spans decades of clinical evidence.

The immediate consequences include severe pain, hemorrhage, infection, urinary complications, and in some cases death. These are not rare edge cases. They are routine. Because FGM is performed primarily on girls between infancy and age 15 — often without anesthesia, often by non-medical practitioners — the physical trauma occurs on bodies that have not consented and cannot adequately protect themselves.

The long-term effects are equally severe and substantially more invisible. Women who have undergone FGM face elevated rates of chronic pain, recurrent urinary tract infections, menstrual problems, cysts, and nerve damage. Sexual function is frequently affected, sometimes profoundly. Scar tissue can make intercourse agonizing.

Childbirth becomes a different kind of crisis. Obstetric complications in FGM-affected women include prolonged labor, increased rates of cesarean delivery, postpartum hemorrhage, and elevated neonatal mortality. A 2006 WHO multicountry study of more than 28,000 women found that those who had undergone FGM were significantly more likely to experience complications during delivery — and their babies were significantly more likely to die. Those findings have since been replicated and reinforced. The WHO updated its clinical guidelines on FGM complications as recently as April 2025.

The psychological harm is documented as well: higher rates of post-traumatic stress disorder, anxiety, depression, and social withdrawal in women who have been cut. Many describe the experience of undergoing FGM as a foundational trauma — one that shapes their relationship to their own bodies, to healthcare systems, and to the adults who were supposed to protect them.

None of this is contested. The WHO, the United Nations, UNICEF, every major medical body that has examined the evidence has reached the same conclusion. There is no clinical context in which FGM confers a health benefit. There is no version of the data that supports the practice.

This isn’t just a problem for another continent. Its here at home, too.