Virginity repair surgery and virginity test are reportedly set to be banned in the UK by the Government.
According to reports, a law to criminalize hymenoplasty known locally as “virginity repair” surgery has already been introduced by the British government. From an amendment to the health care bill added on Monday, Jan. 24, any procedure that attempts to reconstruct the hymen will be illegal no matter if the individual undergoing the surgery gives consent or not.
Report from WION News claims a growing number of clinics, private hospitals, and pharmacies in the country offer the controversial surgery promising the restoration of virginity – with a large number of girls and young women talked into undergoing the procedure.
The UK government in its campaign committed to criminalizing virginity testing last July, were fully supported by doctors and midwives, who called for the surgery to be outlawed. According to the medical personnel’s, the sole purpose of the procedure is to make a girl or woman bleed when she next has sexual contact by creating a fake hymen using scar tissue.
Dr Edward Morris, president of the Royal College of Obstetricians and Gynaecologists in an official statement said Hymenoplasty can never be justified on medical grounds.
Neither of these practices have a place in the medical world and should never be performed, he said adding that any time they learn that someone is performing these procedures, they will inform the General Medical Council so that appropriate action can be taken.
He said that they have been campaigning for the introduction of a ban on both virginity testing and hymenoplasty alongside women’s health and rights organization’s, as both are inextricably linked with violence against women and girls.
The ban is expected to provide vital protection to girls under family pressure, according to one British survivor of “honour” based abuse who was harassed by her parents for months into having the surgery.