- by Gitabushi
So a federal judge said that laws against Female Genital Mutilation (FGM) are unConstitutional:
Conservatives are shocked and outraged. Maybe some Progressives are shocked and outraged, too, but I don’t follow many of them, so I haven’t seen it.
I have several reactions to this.
First, I can almost understand the logic behind the ruling. If FGM laws are Constitutional, it means the Federal Government has arrogated some powers of parenthood to themselves. Can the government ban circumcision? Require circumcision? Ban ear piercings?
However, and more importantly, if there were a movement in the US of parents amputating the dominant hand of their children, I think we’d find a way to make *that* illegal without running afoul of the Constitution. Or if that is too difficult to imagine, sexual abuse and physical abuse are illegal, and that’s perfectly Constitutional, right?
Perhaps the key to that is parents should not be allowed to commit crimes on their children. So to make FGM band Constitutional, we have to make sure it is recognized as a crime.
However, aside from the logic of parental rights described (and hopefully fully refuted) above, I think there are three reasons for this ruling. In no particular order:
- Islam is a Leftist ideology, and so the Left will try to accommodate them whenever possible.
- By couching this in terms of “religious freedom,” the Left is attempting to establish a wedge issue, by which they can paint Christians as religious freedom hypocrites; or if Religious Freedom FGMs are ever successfully banned, they can use those arguments in their assault on Christian religious freedom.
- Permitting parents to have FGM performed on their daughters is topologically identical to permitting parents to have gender re-assignment surgery performed on their children. Trans issues are *extremely* important to the US Left right now.
- At another level, the thought process that allows abortion allows FGM. Strengthen the acceptability of FGM, strengthen the acceptability of abortion. This is like 3rd-order effects, tho, so I’m open to being told this is nonsense.
This is just one battle. Decency, Compassion, and Humanity haven’t lost the war to the Left yet, but we need to fight to find a way to make FGM bans Constitutional.
PC Bushi 
I’ll have to disagree with you. The decision was exactly correct for the reasons the judge stated.
There are to my knowledge no FEDERAL laws against forced amputation, sexual, or physical abuse.
Why?
Because it isn’t the federal government’s job to regulate that. It’s thr job of the states. And so it is here. If you are a states right, anti-federalist conservative this is the right decision.
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I got into a deeper discussion on twitter on this.
Here’s the thing: I have less of a problem with *this one specific* law being struck down than the notion that Congress is powerless to stop blatant abuse.
Meaning, if this law is struck down, fine, let’s write a better one.
But if your argument is that it is impossible for Congress to pass a law banning this nationwide that a skilled solicitor like Ted Cruz or Ted Olson couldn’t win with, then I have to disagree, in light of many other federal laws that were *not* struck down.
At the very least, the justification that allowed Congress to regulate a man growing grain on his own land for his own use based on how it might impact Interstate Commerce should certainly allow Congress to regulate FGM surgery.
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I’m not saying you couldn’t lawyer your way into it. I’m saying that isn’t how it’s supposed to work. Let the state pass the laws. Loopholing your way to getting laws passed is one of the reasons we’re in this mess. Now an honest judge has finally given an honest ruling.
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I’m not saying loopholing, either.
I’m not a lawyer, so maybe I’m way off. But the focus of Rights in Roe v Wade is the mother, not the child. The focus of the Rights in this FGM case is the Doctors (apparently) and maybe the parents. Again, not the interests of the child.
Normally, parents have a wide latitude to make medical decisions for the children, but not the extreme of abuse.
All it takes is to *correctly* identify this as abuse to move it out of the inviolable parental rights bucket, and into the Rights of the Individual.
Which would probably yield a different ruling.
I don’t know the terms, but there are things like Strict Scrutiny vs dunno, Not-So-Strict Scrutiny, where the amount a person is being harmed makes a huge difference on the Constitutionality of the law or not.
I’d think the Federal Government has much more latitude to pass laws that protect the innocent from irretrievable amputation of body parts.
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Do they? Where does it say they have that latitude?
Leave it to the states. You know what appealing Roe v Wade would do? Leave it to the states.
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*Repealing
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I just don’t know why so many people are so eager to throw the baby out with the bathwater.
We made it more than 200 years with federal laws to protect the innocent from things like FGM just hunky dory.
We let the Roe v Wade camel nose in the tent, and now the whole thing is shouldering its way in. We can reverse it, but we have to be clear exactly *how* the Left is manipulating and exploiting our system.
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I don’t know what laws you’re referring to here.
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