About time!

No, I do not! Those procedures (unless they go wrong) do not seriously maim or disable women, and are a matter of choice.

Do you think that boob jobs for purely cosmetic reasons will be looked on in the same way in years to come [along with lip plumping and botox] even though they are not procedures 'forced' on young women other than by societies expectations of what an ideal woman looks like?

wow. It really was a brutal practice wasn't it. Deliberately disabling women.

Trouble is that if the parents can't get it done here they will go to another country , for a visit, just to get it done. It's often not doctors who perform the op but other women. It is an excellent start and I hope they chuck the proverbial book at any doctor who performs this barbaric act. However, we also need to educate the parents especially the women. Quite often it is the women of the family who are the force behind getting their daughters mutilated. Thinking no one will marry their daughter if she is 'entire'. It has nothing to do with Islam it is a cultural procedure. Along the same lines as the old Chinese tradition of binding the feet of well-off little girls. Not peasant girls as they were needed to work. In the 20th Century you could still find women with bound feet. We lived in Far East for many years. There is a photo of me aged 3 in 1947 with my baby amah - she had fallen on hard times and was forced out of China and went into service. Her feet were bound. You can see it in the photo. My mother said she managed though

This disgusting practice should have been stamped out long ago, and those doing it dealt with severely by the law. No mercy!

Its another unfortunate example of women being made to feel their bodies are wrong and then someone profiting.
Young women these days see examples of denuded vulvae in porn magazines. Well of course they all look neat and symmetrical don't they, with the outer labia completely covering the inner labia. Hey presto, anything else is "wrong" and needs to be put right. So they have operations to trim their inner labia. Another example of the cosmetic surgery industry benefiting from the airbrushed porn industry. Just like the boobs - i once looked at a copy of the Star and all the boobs (and there were dozens) were all identical.
Just like in the average changing room
I did once talk to a middle aged woman who had had the op, about 20 years ago, on the NHS. She was rather unhappy that the doctor did a more radical job than she expected.

Ana I do understand what FGM entails, but am shocked that labiaplasty is now so common (a 200% increase in some clinics!!). According to Wikipedia, female genital mutilation is defined as: “all procedures that involve partial or total removal of the external female genitalia, or other injury to the female genital organs for non-medical reasons”. As labiaplasty is most commonly done for cosmetic reasons this seems to me to be a form of elective FGM that is undergone for cultural reasons.

grannyactivist, if you Google FGM you'll soon be made aware of the difference between that and the cosmetic surgery you refer to.

Apologies for not spotting this when I made my own comments on the prosecutions beign brought against doctor at The Whittington.

I may be a bit ignorant about this, but I recently had a conversation with someone who was explaining to me that currently the most asked for cosmetic operation is labiaplasty. Apparently young girls in particular are paying a fortune for this. I thought that FGM included labiaplasty as part of the definition. Am I wrong?

Are there school nurses nowadays?

It is good news but I doubt it will put a stop to it. From what I've been told, the majority of these 'procedures' are carried out by women in those communities; that will be much harder to stop.

There was a discussion not so long wasn't there about school nurses checking the girls to see if this has been done to them and then approaching the families - not sure if anything came of that line of approach though.

It is the first, according to the lunchtime news. Let's hope other doctors and practitioners will take heed.

Very pleased to hear this.

I think this will be the first UK prosecution?

sunseeker do we know if the procedure was performed at The Whittington Hospital or just that the Dr. was employed by them at the time.?
I do hope this is not brushed under the carpet and that the prosecutions go ahead without the culture card being used to have the charges dismissed.

Bout time indeed. I was talking to a bright young woman the other day about the issue and she was quite shocked when i suggested that there were probably UK based doctors who had a profitable line in performing FGM. I reminded her that in the 1950s and 60s there were lots of doctors profiting from performing illegal abortions.

Welcome news.

Hoo-bloody-ray!

Good they are going for the Drs who should have the power and community influence to stand up to pressure to perform this awful surgery.

I do feel that its the "influential" people from the communities where this is a traditional practice who should get out there and spread the message about how wrong it is. In theory they might be trusted more than if the message is being passed on by "whites" who do not "understand our culture".
I hope the courts throw the book at them.

Ugh! What a truly vile thing to do to women, hope thay continue to root out these ghastly medics.

Good!

Good news.