[Sexual mutilation in women].

The sexual mutilations, a fairly topical subject, remain very frequent (between 80 and 100 millions). The excisions are in practice mainly in Africa (in at last 20 countries), but also in the Far-East and Indonesia. In some cases, such practices are very mutilative (Pharaonic infibulation). They may drag to the death, through haemorrhage or infection. The short and long term medical complications are fearful, tetanus, vesicovaginal fistulae, vaginal or vulvar sclerosis, forbidding any sexual involvement and hampering delivery. The grounds of these practices are basically customary and not religious. Women shall be subservient to men and any manhood mark, embodied by the clitoris, shall disappear. However these manoeuvres are decreasing, due to the women emancipation, and, particularly, in Africa, some leaders are aware of their graveness and are punishing heavily the excision, taking model of the French Penal Code. The immigrants, who, in France, have these mutilations undertaken, are incurring imprisonment sentences (precedents are frequent). They must comply with the French laws.