The Prohibition of Female Circumcision Act 1985 (c. 38) is a repealed Act of the

Parliament of the United Kingdom The Parliament of the United Kingdom is the supreme legislative body of the United Kingdom, the Crown Dependencies and the British Overseas Territories. It meets at the Palace of Westminster, London. It alone possesses legislative suprema ...

. It made

female genital mutilation Female genital mutilation (FGM), also known as female genital cutting, female genital mutilation/cutting (FGM/C) and female circumcision, is the ritual cutting or removal of some or all of the external female genitalia. The practice is found ...

a crime throughout the UK, allowing for sentences of up to five years' imprisonment. It was introduced to the House of Lords by

Wayland Young, 2nd Baron Kennet Wayland Hilton Young, 2nd Baron Kennet (2 August 1923 – 7 May 2009) was a British writer and politician, notably concerned with planning and conservation. As a Labour minister, he was responsible for setting up the Department of the Environmen ...

, and passed on 16 July 1985, coming into force two months later. No one was ever successfully prosecuted under the Act, but a medical practitioner was stricken from the

Medical Register The General Medical Council (GMC) is a public body that maintains the official register of medical practitioners within the United Kingdom. Its chief responsibility is to "protect, promote and maintain the health and safety of the public" by c ...

in 1993 for having performed the procedure. The Act was replaced by the

Female Genital Mutilation Act 2003 The Female Genital Mutilation Act 2003 (c. 31) is an Act of the Parliament of the United Kingdom applying to England, Wales and Northern Ireland. It replaced the Prohibition of Female Circumcision Act 1985, extending the ban on female genital muti ...

in England, Wales and Northern Ireland, and the

Prohibition of Female Genital Mutilation (Scotland) Act 2005 The Prohibition of Female Genital Mutilation (Scotland) Act 2005 (asp 8) is an Act of the Scottish Parliament. It extended previous legislation by also making it illegal for UK nationals to perform female genital mutilation outside the borders of ...

in Scotland, both of which extend the legislation to cover acts committed by UK nationals outside of the UK's borders, so that it became a crime to take a girl abroad to undergo FGM.

References

External links

*{{UK-LEG, Prohibition of Female Circumcision Act 1985, path=ukpga/1985/38 United Kingdom Acts of Parliament 1985 Female genital mutilation in the United Kingdom 1985 in women's history

See also

References

External links