Patients Embrace Culturally Sensitive Care

A doctor’s familiarity with female circumcision leads African women who’ve had the procedure to her clinic.

Elizabeth Mehren, L. A. Times, Jun. 2

BOSTON—John pulled his cab over when he heard Dr. Nawal M. Nour on the radio. The Sudanese American physician was describing the clinic she runs for women who have undergone female circumcision—women like his wife, Miriam—and John wanted to learn all he could.

“Other doctors, they didn’t know our culture,” said John, a Somali immigrant who did not want the family’s full name used. “Sometimes we felt, my wife and I, like people were looking at us differently. They know we are different, because of the circumcision. It looks to them like a surprise—like ’What has happened to this woman?’”

To Nour, 38, female genital mutilation, as she and many other critics refer to the practice, is repugnant, but by no means baffling.

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