by Lola Slider, UKAPP Medical Liaison

In the United Kingdom right now there is a cloud over the legal classification of female genital piercings.

Their current legal status is effectively non-existent; they are neither legal nor illegal. This creates a vast cavity of misinformation available for gross misinterpretation.

I first contacted my local police department in September of 2016, after my failure to get clarification on this subject from my licensing authority, and got a response almost immediately. A short and clear, “yes, in a licensed shop on a consenting 18+ year old adult, this is legal.” Three short years later, in April of 2019, after three weeks of sending multiple reminders to two departments, I received a reply from the same police department. They told me, “I am not in a position to advise if any offence has been committed. In the event a complaint was made it would be a matter for the courts to decide.”

In that three year period no laws have changed in Scotland, which suggests to me it is the attitude that has changed. The Serious Crime Act 2015¹ is applicable only in England and Wales. Scottish female genital mutilation (FGM) law falls under The Prohibition of Female Genital Mutilation (Scotland) Act 2005². Both acts, however, contain the key word “mutilation” at the center of all this legal ambiguity. With a word so charged with connotation, it can be difficult to find legal clarification on exactly what it covers. With the intention of clarifying and standardizing the definition, the World Health Organization has classified FGM into four major types³. Unfortunately, the term “piercing” is used in Type 4, possibly in reference to the stitching involved in infibulation or forms of Sunna, where the clitoris  and labia are pierced and encouraged to bleed freely.

The National Health Service (NHS) is “collecting data about women and girls with FGM who are being cared for by the NHS in England. This collection includes data items that will be routinely discussed by the patient and health professional as part of the standard delivery of care and that are included in the patient’s healthcare record.”⁴ Due to the classification by the WHO, “genital piercings are included” in this data collection, because “the data item FGM Type 4 Qualifier allows users to specify that the FGM was a piercing.” The FGM Enhanced Dataset—Frequently Asked Questions⁵ text goes on to state that “labiaplasty and genital tattoos are not included.”

What the piercing community needs are clear amendments made to the existing legislation that state cosmetic genital piercings on consenting adults, performed in licensed premises, are excluded from the classification of Type 4 FGM. This will eliminate the current legal ambiguity we face and protect us from investigations that, even if ultimately do not result in prosecution, could be career ending. This will allow women in the UK parity with men seeking genital piercings and it will prevent the NHS from recording women with genital piercings as FGM suffers. Under current Department of Health policy, patient permission is not needed to do so.

From January to March⁶ of this year alone, an astonishing 1,990 cases of FGM were recorded in England. We can only hope policymakers take the time, as I did, to find that only 1,015 of those cases were new and of that, 750 where recorded  as  “unknown”  as  opposed to being classified as Type 1 through 4. Of these, 85 were Type 4 and 65 were “not recorded”; how these   65 somehow became part of the statistics is anyone’s guess. By simply reading the first quarterly⁷ NHS Female Genital Mutilation (FGM) Enhanced Dataset of this year, the number has potentially been reduced  from 1,990 to 115.

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1. “Serious Crime Act 2015,” UK Public General Acts, legislation.gov.uk delivered by The National Archives, up to date as of August 13, 2019,
   http://www.legislation.gov.uk/ukpga/2015/9/contents.
2. “Prohibition of Female Genital Mutilation (Scotland) Act 2005,” Acts of the Scottish Parliament, legislation.gov.uk delivered by The National Archives, accessed August 13, 2019,
   http://www.legislation.gov.uk/asp/2005/8/contents.
3. “Female Genital Mutilation,” Fact sheets, World Health Organization, dated January 31, 2018,
   https://www.who.int/news-room/fact-sheets/detail/female-genital-mutilation.
4. “Health professionals and NHS organisations,” Female Genital Mutilation Datasets, NHS Digital, last edited October 3, 2018,
   https://digital.nhs.uk/data-and-information/clinical-audits-and-registries/female-genital-mutilation-datasets/health-professionals-and-nhs-organisations#publications.
5. NHS Digital, “FGM Enhanced Dataset—Frequently Asked Questions,” updated May 2019,
   https://digital.nhs.uk/binaries/content/assets/website-assets/clinical-audits/fgm/frequently-asked-questions.pdf.
6. “Female Genital Mutilation January-March 2019,” Female Genital Mutilation, NHS Digital, published May 24, 2019,
   https://digital.nhs.uk/data-and-information/publications/statistical/female-genital-mutilation/january-to-march-2019.
7. “FGM 2019 Q1 – Report,” Female Genital Mutilation (FGM) Enhanced Dataset, NHS Digital, published May 24, 2019,
   https://files.digital.nhs.uk/18/643E66/FGM%202019%20Q1%20-%20Report.pdf.
8. “Strengthening protection from Female Genital Mutilation (FGM): consultation,” Publications, Scottish Government, published October 4, 2018,
   https://www.gov.scot/publications/strengthening-protection-female-genital-mutilation-fgm/