LEGAL RESTRICTIONS ON MEDICAL INTERVENTION DURING OPERATION ON FEMALE GENITALIA FOR NON-MEDICAL PURPOSES

Abstract

The aim: To identify problems associated with non-medical genital surgery and establish the limits of acceptable medical intervention in such operations. Materials and methods: The study is based on a theoretical basis, which includes reviews of legislation, reports from non-governmental organizations, and is based on empirical data: decisions of the European Court of Human Rights, international regulations, statistics of the World Health Organization. Systemic and structural, comparative legal and functional methods, systematization, analysis and synthesis were decisive in the research process. Conclusions: “Female genital mutilation” or “female circumcision” is essentially a separate type of bodily injury that is caused intentionally in accordance with various social domestic and religious traditions and beliefs of certain emigrant ethnical religious communities. Such actions are a form of discrimination and violation of women's rights on the basis of gender, as well as a form of child abuse, as the vast majority of such operations are carried out on girls under 12 years of age. Medical intervention in case of operations on female genitalia, including for non-therapeutic purposes, can be considered legitimate only with the informed consent of the patient and on conditions that the level of danger to human health from such intervention corresponds to the concept of personal autonomy, that is, it does not require direct state intervention for the reasons of urgent social necessity.