Bullshit.

[mediabiasfactcheck.com]

Not sure how that says it is "right-wing". I'm liberal and definitely left of center and strongly against forced mutilation of kids without an urgent medical reason - that would include circumcision of men too - however I think this article feels like a bit of a hit job and misrepresents the facts.

If you read the details you will find:

1. At the time when Democrats were arguing against the State law in 2017 and April there was standing State legislation and Federal Regulation - the Dems own SAFE Act - unanimously passed by congress in 2017 with 15 year penalty for FGM - and increase over the 5 years that was in existing 1996 Federal Law.
2. Those in favor of the new State regulation couldn't provide evidence that it was taking place anyway, just an "estimate of those at risk"
3. The Democrats didn't believe another law would make any difference, better to try and achieve cultural change by education since it is much better to prevent this practice because once maimed a girl is maimed for life

However the article omits the fact that the Republican Senate never voted on the SAFE act - thanks Mitch - and then in November 2018 Reagan appointed Federal judge Bernard A Friedman ruled that the Federal Regulation was unconstitutional because it was not an interstate commerce issue but a "local criminal activity" and therefore up to the States to legislate against.

Since then 38 States have authored their own State legislations but this was all long after the original Democratic opposition in Maine. A ballot initiative to reintroduce legislation in Maine was started in late 2018 but apparently failed to gain enough signatures to be on the 2020 ballot.

Like I said, I'm most definitely against FGM but ask yourself this - do the many laws we have against crimes actually prevent them effectively? And given that there are apparently already laws against this how does another one help - will there be inspections of girls? Won't increased scrutiny drive this practice even further underground? I think much better education sounds like the way to go - encourage whistle blowing before the wretched event and enforce existing laws to the fullest extent if and when victims are discovered. That is basically what the Dems were arguing for in 2017 vs. ineffective duplication of laws current at the time.

See: [mainelegislature.org]
And [mainelegislature.org]
And [usnews.com]
And [en.wikipedia.org]

PS. The claims of racism seem to center around the content of this article the original article referenced: [www1.cbn.com]

In it it mentions how State Rep. Lois Reckitt decribed estimating the number at risk of FGM in Maine simply by "counting potential victims at-risk by counting the number of Somali, Egyptian and Gideon females in immigrant families in Maine" had inherent racism in its math. I would say that's an accurate statement about bias - although it could be argued that was, at the time, their best way to estimate. As other data in the article suggests there was wild disagreement about what the numbers might actually be - from none to 5 to 25% of doctors patients in Portland. I'm assuming the 0 number comes from voluntary survey of families or women, and the latter from a restricted survey of some doctors in certain communities. It does seem like legislation efforts would definitely benefit from a concerted effort to estimate, without bias, the prevelance. How else could you ever measure later if it has had some effect? (I'm dead against ineffective legislation)