Prohibition of Female Circumcision Act 1985
| Act of Parliament | |||||||||
.svg) | |||||||||
| Long title | An Act to prohibit female circumcision. | ||||||||
|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| Citation | 1985 c. 38 | ||||||||
| Introduced by | Lord Kennet, Dame Marion Roe[1][2]. | ||||||||
| Territorial extent | [b] | ||||||||
| Dates | |||||||||
| Royal assent | 16 July 1985 | ||||||||
| Commencement | 16 September 1985[c] | ||||||||
| Repealed |
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Status: Repealed | |||||||||
| Text of statute as originally enacted | |||||||||
| Revised text of statute as amended | |||||||||
The Prohibition of Female Circumcision Act 1985 (c. 38) was an act of the Parliament of the United Kingdom. It made female genital mutilation a crime throughout the UK, allowing for sentences of up to five years' imprisonment.[3] It was first introduced to the House of Lords by Wayland Young, 2nd Baron Kennet in 1983,[1] but the Bill did not progress to the House of Commmons.
Two years later, Dame Marion Roe MP introduced a private member's bill to prohibit female genital mutilation [4]. With cross-party support, Roe's Bill gained royal assent on 16 July 1985.[5]
No one was ever successfully prosecuted under the act,[6] but a medical practitioner was stricken from the Medical Register in 1993 for having performed the procedure.[7] The act was replaced by the Female Genital Mutilation Act 2003 in England, Wales and Northern Ireland, and the Prohibition of Female Genital Mutilation (Scotland) Act 2005 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.
See also
[edit]Notes
[edit]References
[edit]- 1 2 First reading of Prohibition of Female Circumcision Act, Hansard, 2 March 1983
- ↑ "Prohibition of Female Circumcision". Hansard. Retrieved 19 June 2026.
- ↑ S. 1(2)
- ↑ "Prohibition of Female Circumcision". Hansard. Retrieved 19 June 2026.
- ↑ S. 4
- ↑ Kerbaj, Richard (16 March 2009). "Thousands of girls mutilated in Britain". Times Online.[dead link]
- ↑ Black JA, Debelle GD (June 1995). "Female genital mutilation in Britain". BMJ. 310 (6994): 1590–2. doi:10.1136/bmj.310.6994.1590. PMC 2549951. PMID 7787654.
External links
[edit]- Text of the Prohibition of Female Circumcision Act 1985 as originally enacted or made within the United Kingdom, from legislation.gov.uk.
