The BBC recently ran a profile of Amna Badri, a campaigner against female genital mutilation who herself was a victim of the practice at the age of six in Sudan.
Badri describes her own experience when she and her sister, then only five, were circumcised. Badri and her sister underwent the mildest form of female circumcision in which a part of the clitoris is removed. She describes how she and her sister were teased by other girls who had undergone what is called phoronic circumcision — the clitoris is completely removed and the outer lips of the vagina are sown shut so that only a small area for urination and menstruation is left open.
Badri told the BBC that friends who underwent phoronic circumcision experienced many health problems in later years, as can be imagined, but that for the most part they still supported the procedure,
They had complications starting from when they started their periods. They had a lot of pain because the blood can’t easily get out, also a lot of them had continual abscesses. The most complicated situation is childbirth because they have to be cut open and then they insist on being re-circumcised, stitched up again.
Badri left Sudan to become a political refugee, with her family, in Great Britain in 1997. The BBC reports that she now works with organizations to help women who have been circumcised take advantage of health services, as well as efforts to convince women in Great Britain — where FGM is illegal — not to take their young daughters back to Sudan for the procedure.
Source:
Circumcision: One woman’s story. Cindi John, The BBC, February 18, 2001.