Elizabeth Yore, head of the #EndFGMToday initiative to stamp out female genital mutilation (FGM), joined SiriusXM host Alex Marlow on Thursday’s edition of Breitbart News Daily.
“FGM is being imported into the United States as a result of the massive migration of refugees,” Yore warned. “It is a problem that has gripped the world. For example, UNICEF says that there are over 200 million women and girls who have been subjected to FGM around the world. It’s nightmarish.”
“This is an issue that feminists should be up in arms about,” she said. “It is about the suppression of female sexual pleasure. This brutal practice is used against little girls as young as five years old. It’s here on our shores. It is a federal crime in the United States, and we’re trying to get it to be a state crime in every state of the United States.”
Yore offered the example of Michigan Gov. Rick Snyder’s signing a “very tough FGM law which makes it a criminal penalty of 15 years if you’re engaged in FGM” and praised the Trump administration for being “very proactive” on the issue.
“We had the first prosecution in the United States in over 20 years in Michigan,” she noted. “All eyes are not only on the Michigan prosecution, but also on the Maine legislature, which today in the veto session is going to be voting once again to criminalize FGM in Maine.”
“What makes this so important in Maine is, Maine is a top-tier state for having a Somali population,” she explained. “UNICEF says that over 95 percent of women and girls are subjected to FGM in Somalia, and this doesn’t stop when they arrive on the shores of the United States. That’s why it’s so critical that Maine and the Democratic Maine legislators today vote to criminalize in the state legislature this horrendous and horrific barbaric practice.”
Yore characterized female genital mutilation as “a criminal sexual assault on very little girls, from newborn to up to age five or six.”
“It’s the excision of the clitoris; that’s female genitalia,” she explained. “Many times in this procedure, girls don’t even receive anesthesia, so they are held down by people and their clitoris is cut. The purpose of this procedure, this practice, this religious practice in many, many, many countries is because they want to suppress the ability of females to enjoy sexual pleasure.”
“For example, in the Dawoodi Bohra Shia Muslim cult, the purpose is that they want to suppress women to ensure that they are not interested in sex, that men have control over women,” she elaborated.
“This brutal practice not only impinges on the pleasure of sex, but also these women for a lifetime suffer severe physical and emotional trauma and consequences as a result of this procedure,” said Yore.
“And it’s going on in the United States,” she warned, citing estimates that more than 513,000 women have been subjected to the procedure in America. “What we’re trying to do is to prevent this from metastasizing in the United States. It’s an underground network. We’ve seen that in the Michigan case that is being prosecuted. It is far greater than what anybody anticipated.”
Yore pointed to reports that the network in the Michigan case is believed to extend from Detroit to Chicago, Los Angeles, and New York. She also highlighted a Breitbart News piece about the growth of FGM in Germany, where incidents have tripled in a single year.
“Beware, America. This barbaric practice that’s been going on for centuries needs to be criminalized in every single state in the United States,” she urged.
Marlow asked about the relationship between FGM and Islam, asking Yore which Islamic sects are most likely to participate in the practice.
“I don’t think we know the exact number that is being practiced outside of Islam, but we do know, for example, UNICEF has identified a number of African and Middle East countries where the practice is extremely high,” she replied, naming Egypt, Somalia, and Yemen as nations of particular concern.
“The left is throwing out this small percentage, which I think is minuscule, frankly, of the Christian population,” she continued. “This is where we need to look at the ACLU. The ACLU is battling in Maine to prevent the criminalization of FGM. Democratic legislators in Maine are submitting to the dictates of the ACLU and not listening to the cries of the little girls in Maine and around this country who will be subjected to this barbaric procedure.”
“Why is that? Because the ACLU, believe me, rejects the protection of children and stands at the altar of power and diversity, in order to not allow FGM to be criminalized around the United States,” Yore charged.
“This is an underground network, and the only way to expose the underground network is to prosecute these cases. Kudos to the Trump administration! The FBI is now running a hotline for tips on FGM. Secretary Kelly of DHS has now started a pilot program at New York airport, educating both immigrants and people leaving the United States about the dangers and criminality of FGM, Operation Limelight USA at JFK Airport. We hope that pilot project will go to every major airport,” she said.
“The Trump administration has recognized that this is a scourge, that it is underground, that it must be exposed before it metastasizes in the United States,” she declared. “We ask the public, those Maine citizens, to call your legislators today. The vote is going to be today, to ask to ban FGM on the state level, criminalize it. And we ask that those victims who are out there call the hotline, the FBI hotline, and expose this underground network that is destroying the lives of little girls.”
Yore also praised Breitbart News for being on the forefront of the FGM issue.
“We are importing infectious diseases into this country because of migration. We are also importing procedures, barbaric procedures like FGM,” she warned.
A caller asked if FGM is a major “religious issue” or more properly understood as the practice of some fringe cults.
Yore responded by looking at the Michigan case. “It is mandated in the Dawoodi Bohra cult, so it is clearly a religious practice,” she argued.
“In The Reliance of the Traveler, the book on Islamic law, they mandate FGM to women,” she explained. “This is the issue that people need to look at. There are 22 mosques in the United States of the Dawoodi Bohra cult, so you just do the math. In a religious Shia Muslim cult which mandates FGM, there’s going to be numerous, numerous, hundreds and hundreds of little girls that are at risk of FGM.”
“It’s clearly in many, many Muslim cults and sects that this procedure is mandated on little girls. Quite frankly, Alex, it’s being conducted by their mothers, who take them to mutilators and impose this horrendous abuse on children,” she told Marlow.
Yore stressed the importance of criminal prosecution as the only effective deterrent against female genital mutilation.
“The Trump administration understands that. Citizens should demand it. The left – if women really do care about the rights of females, this should be, as you point out, Alex, number one on the marching list. Forget the pink hats, and get out there and fight for little girls because they don’t have a voice,” she urged feminists.
“The left and the feminist movement should be ashamed that this isn’t number one on their marching list, to absolutely demand criminalization and prosecution in every state because otherwise, as we know – look at Germany, look at Europe – this horrible procedure and practice is going to become endemic in the United States, other than the voice of adult women speaking out for little girls, who are absolutely helpless to know what is happening to them and then endure a lifetime – a lifetime – of severe health consequences because of this procedure,” she cautioned.
“And no women are speaking up,” Yore marveled. “Where’s the left? They are absolutely silent on this issue. The ACLU is fighting with the mutilators. That’s all you need to know about the ACLU. That’s all you need to know. In Maine, they are very aggressively fighting the criminalization of FGM. Look into the left’s agenda in 2017. They are not protecting our most vulnerable and not listening to the cries of little girls. That’s what this is all about.”
“It’s incomprehensible to me that the left would not be absolutely demanding prosecution and exposure of this underground network of mutilators, and that’s what it is. It’s not a pretty sight, but it is actually one that is going to absolutely destroy the lives of hundreds, if not millions, of little girls in the United States unless we act now,” she said.
Yore concluded by warning that if the Maine legislature does not vote to criminalize FGM, the state will become “a safe harbor for mutilators” and predicted that “we’re going to see more and more Somali citizens going to Maine because the procedure is not a crime under state law.”
“Is that what Maine citizens want?” she asked.
Breitbart News Daily airs on SiriusXM Patriot 125 weekdays from 6 a.m. to 9 a.m. Eastern.