At a recent Modern Language Association panel, Rebecca Wanzo, an assistant professor at Ohio State University, called for justice for women in the area of reproductive health by equating unequal access to “family planning” resources, as provided by the U.S., with female genital mutilation, as practiced in Islamic and non-Western countries.

As Bethany Stotts reports, Wanzo wrongly lumps ”FGC” in with restricted funding for reproductive health care, reasoning that “U.S. restrictions on such funding can disable women and in the case of supporting abstinence-only education, regions that experience high rates of HIV put women at risk of death.”