Sara Gideon Repeatedly Blocked Attempts to Criminalize Female Genital Mutilation in Maine

As Democrat Senate candidate Sara Gideon’s record comes under more scrutiny, her role in blocking bills outlawing female genital mutilation is finally being exposed. A new report from The Washington Free Beacon lays out the potentially life-threatening dangers of Gideon’s obstruction:

“Female genital mutilation is an archaic cultural custom practiced in parts of the Middle East and Africa that the United Nations considers a violation of human rights. The procedure, which is done to discourage sex outside of marriage, causes numerous medical problems such as excessive bleeding, infections, difficulty passing urine, and sometimes death. A 2012 Public Health Reports study estimated that more than 500,000 women and girls were at risk for female genital mutilation or its consequences in the United States.”

Despite these risks, Sara Gideon believed the bill was “racist” toward immigrants from Somalia, where the medieval procedure is “nearly universal.”

“Gideon leveraged her leadership position in the Democrat-controlled legislature to kill two separate bills that would have criminalized the practice of severing the clitoris of infant girls and sewing their vaginas shut. Instead, the Democrat supported a different law that would have funneled $150,000 to her political allies to educate Mainers about the practice instead of criminalizing it, according to a former state legislator who spearheaded the push to stop the mutilation.”

Gideon went on to block several versions of the legislation, even as survivors of the practice spoke out against her. One survivor even described Gideon’s callous dismissal of her presence at a hearing:

“I couldn’t even breathe—that’s how bad it was,” she said. “But this woman just walked on by us as if I wasn’t even a human being. And that told me a lot about the type of person she is—she just doesn’t care.”