The Caged Virgin - Ayaan Hirsi Ali [59]
Genital mutilation falls into the category of extremely serious crimes and has a substantial negative health impact—even a crippling effect—on the victim. Its consequences include: “shock, bleeding, abscess formation; and at a later stage, complications affecting the urinary tract, as well as labor and delivery; psychiatric, psychosomatic, and psychosocial effects for young girls…After the procedure girls can become introverted, reticent, withdrawn, and may show signs of behavioral disturbances such as eating disorders and phobias.” Genital mutilation can also “lead to posttraumatic stress disorder. For the girl experiences a sense of powerlessness, a lack of control, consent, and information, and suffers intense pain.”
Are there openings in the law for the introduction of a screening program?
Article 11 of the Dutch constitution guarantees the inviolability of the individual’s human body. This article is the little brother of Article 10 of the constitution, which safeguards the individual’s right to personal privacy. Both articles matter for our proposal; in terms of international treaty law, they are the counterparts of Article 8 of the European Convention on Human Rights (ECHM) and Article 17 of the United Nations Covenant on Civil and Political Rights (signed in 1966).
Yet Muslim reactionaries as well as all other political parties and politically correct politicians who want to preserve genital mutilation argue against a screening program. Their sophistic contention is that a compulsory checkup for a young at-risk girl is a medical intervention that encroaches on the right to the inviolability of the individual’s (the girl’s) body and encroaches on the girl’s and the parents’ right to personal privacy.
The ECHM outlines in detail how and under what circumstances the government may lawfully breach the constitution. It is essential that there are enough compelling reasons for such a transgression, otherwise it becomes pointless to have a constitution. The ECHM lists a number of grounds on which the government has the right to breach the constitution. They are (freely translated): border security, public security, national economic welfare, the prevention of national disarray and penal offenses, the protection of health and moral standards, and the protection of individual rights.
In other words, a breach of the constitution can be justified if it prevents the occurrence of a crime (willful, grievous bodily harm). This exceptional ground seems the obvious argument on which to build our case. The ECHM offers the possibility of lawfully imposing medical treatment, provided it can be demonstrated that doing so is of vital importance in the prevention of crime.
Proportionality is one aspect of this “demonstrating it is of vital importance.” Is the violation of individual rights outweighed by the importance of preventing the crime? In other words: does the end justify the means?
The legal debate about how best to combat genital mutilation centers on this question. I believe that without compulsory screening there is no effective way of preventing genital mutilation. Therefore, the program is a necessary step. Moreover, the constitution requires the government to take preventive measures in order to protect the integrity of the human body. It gives the government the duty to act.
My party and I are instructing the government to take steps that will prevent genital mutilation. Regarding the question of proportionality, an annual examination by a female nurse working for the local health authority is vastly preferable to allowing girls to be put at risk of serious mutilation. This legal argument