SLASH, SLASH, SLASH

     There was enough commotion about it that you probably all
remember the CNN airing of a film showing the circumcision of a
ten-year-old girl in Cairo in October of last year during the U.N.
Population Conference in that city.

     Traditional barbers in Egypt have for long doubled as amateur
surgeons to perform circumcisions on young girls. Last year, in a
small tent set up during the religious festival to celebrate the
birthday of the Prophet Mohammed's granddaughter, a barber and his
wife performed a circumcision on a fourteen-year-old girl.

     On February 8, they were sentenced to two years in jail, at
hard labor for violating the child's humanity, insulting her pride,
performing the procedure in front of passersby, and endangering her
life by using unsterilized instruments.

     There was no word concerned with the girl's parents and their
assent to or participation in the act. Both Moslems and Christians
circumcise their daughters in Egypt, where 50%-90% of the female
population has been circumcised.

     Instead of prohibiting the operation, the Health Minister said
he would only consider moving the practice to hospitals where
regular medical doctors would carry out the procedure so that
nothing could go wrong.

     It never dawns on the men involved that the whole damn
practice is wrong.

Source: Reuters, 2/15/95