I had until today assumed that the illegality of MGM in the UK hadn’t been revealed publicly by a legally qualified person before a barrister revealed it in his talk at a conference in 2013. I was wrong. Earlier today I received an email from Patrick Smyth, reproduced here in full:
Mike
I don’t recall mentioning the work of Chris Price to you. I sadly never met him since he died before I became involved with NORM UK. He was a solicitor and a staunch intactivist. He compiled an absolutely monumental thesis on the illegality of infant male circumcision in 1996 which is still available on the Circumcision Reference Library website:
http://www.cirp.org/library/legal/price-uklc/
He also submitted an article to the Bulletin of Medical Ethics in 1997:
http://www.cirp.org/library/legal/price/
As well as contributing to an impressive tome on the subject:
that can be viewed here:
http://www.cirp.org/library/legal/price2/
I understand that he was he was a chain smoker as a result of the effects of circumcision, and he died on the operating table whilst undergoing a lung transplant. I very much regret never meeting him.
Just thought it might be helpful as additional reference material on the legal position.
Regards.
Patrick
Slightly off topic. I did the training on FGM recently. It was very interesting because it made clear the problem. The originating cultures are indeed very gender segregated, with rigid male and female “spheres”. FGM is seen as part of the rites de passage for females and as such is very much in the female “sphere” with men excluded. So of course the most likely perpetrators of the most likely offences in the Act ,planning or actually trying to take a girl abroad for the FGM, will be female. Seeing as the training (also rolled out to Borders Services, police and CPS) sees perpetration as a male thing, they will be looking for men! So nothing need change for the law to be evaded because our ideological blindness means “we” will be looking the wrong way.
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It is the power of culture. Our legal system relies heavily on case law to interpret and enact the written law. Not infrequently laws can be dormant because of no cases or change over time due to a volume of cases. Both MGM and FGM are strictly unlawful. But there are very few cases wherein this is tested in courts. The recent specific law on FGM is, I suspect likely to have few cases (I know on only on an NHS Surgeon which ended in a mess) as it essentially criminalised something which happens in another country. While the crux of the matter for infants is whether the act is a harm and who can “consent” on behalf of the infant. It is the latter that is the subject of cases as far as I can see. Thus far I don’t think anyone has legally tested the former. So its about getting our culture to recognise that it is a procedure wherein there is a harm with only rarely a benefit..
Mike could you please put on your site the meaning of some of your acronyms. Some of us need to need to identify their meaning. So that they can be used when needed to redress the points in the following…
“Amazing Grace (2015)” is doing a sterling job at beginning the Partisan or Resistance Movement to change the behavoural inaptitude of citizens in this country so that they can learn more about the need for parity of engaged rights of parents and families to comprehensive parental responsibility, and Anti-Alienation Legislation as is the case which according to FnF has been legally enacted in Brazil and Mexico.
There is so much corruption by certain persons in Children’s Services (in LA) and some Court Arbiters that perjury and perverting the Course of Justice is rife; in public law in some places it is worse. (See Children Screaming to be Heard). The Children and Family Act (2014) and Children’s Act (1989), need repealing and to be replaced by holistic and fully comprehensive child, parent and family legislation to include that as mentioned above. This is becoming a national scandal and a debacle (affecting up to 4 million children and 13 million family members in the UK -ONS). There also seems to be a complete media black out for these realities, beginning with certain a BBC Local Radio Stations not 16 kms from my home town!