FGM

A Life-Threatening Tradition

Different cultures believe that FGM benefits women in a number of ways, including respect for tradition, improving the health of the woman, aesthetics, religion, controlling a woman's emotions and reducing her sex drive, and making conception and child-bearing easier.

The most common type of FGM in Ethiopia and worldwide is clitoridectomy—the excision of the clitoris and the labia minora. Infibulation—the excision of all or part of the external genitalia and the stitching or narrowing of the vaginal opening—is the most extreme form.

Contaminated tools, such as razors, glass, and knives, are often used to perform FGM. If a girl survives this trauma, the effects on her life are immediate, irreversible, and long-term:

• Severe pain and shock
• Hemorrhage and infection leading to death, including HIV/AIDS contraction
• Urine retention and urinary tract infection
• Ulceration of the genital region
• Injury to adjacent tissue, cysts, and abscesses
• Keloid scar formation
• Damage to the urethra, resulting in urinary incontinence
• Painful sexual intercourse and sexual dysfunction
• Infertility
• Childbirth complications

Infibulation causes especially harsh childbirth complications, including obstructed labor, which contribute to the high mortality of women between 14 and 19 years old.

Fistula—an easily preventable injury sustained during obstructed labor—can result in a woman's lifelong incontinence and social ostracism. When a woman cannot successfully deliver her baby vaginally, and the nearest hospital is several days' walk away, she may labor up to ten days as her body tries to expel the stillborn fetus. The pressure of the baby against the delicate tissues creates a hole between the vagina, the bladder, and the rectum. The result is a constant leaking of urine, and sometimes feces, through her vagina.

A woman with this injury not only loses her baby but her productive life as well. Since she cannot bear children in this state, her husband usually "returns" her to her family. Constantly wet from urine, she smells bad and is isolated from others, typically not even able to go to the market. She is an outcast, and her life is in ruins. 

Education to Halt FGM

A respected moral authority, EECMY continues to successfully educate village elders and parents about the dangers of FGM. From the field and from the pulpit, EECMY leaders link FGM not only to personal health risks but also to village poverty and decline.

Today, FGM practices are no longer the norm in the villages we serve. Girls and young women face the future without injury and trauma. Young men even take oaths not to marry girls who have undergone FGM, an incentive for all families to break with tradition.

Call to Action

• Support EECMY's successful educational campaign against FGM through our CBRH program