Newsfront: Sponsor a Clitoris

Looking for a good cause? Why not adopt a clitoris in need? A few people are working to reverse the damage caused by the atrocity of clitoral excision, or female genital multilation, in some cultures in Africa. The Raelian religion, for which sexual freedom is a guiding tenet, has launched the non-profit Clitoraid to solicit donations to pay for “clitoralplasty” or female circumcision reversals. (“Circumcision” is a misnomer in this case; it's closer to castration.) The Raelians are also trying to build a “Pleasure Hospital” in Burkina Faso, West Africa, where Christian and Muslim women could have the surgery for free. 

By some estimates as many as 130 million women worldwide have been mutilated in the name of God and Allah, including some in the States. As Newsweek reports, Dr. Marci Bowers, a transsexual surgeon in Colorado, has pioneered the repairs in the U.S. (She also has completed more than 500 male-to-female vaginoplasties and does more than 200 gender-related surgeries each year.) She learned the procedure from Dr. Pierre Foldes, a French urologist who has been threatened with death by radical Islamists. While the surgery is covered by national health insurance in France, most U.S. insurers won't cover it. So Bowers performs it free of charge and the hospital where she works caps its fees at $1,700.

Bowers told Newsweek, "As Dr. Foldes has said, you cannot charge money to reverse a crime against humanity. Sexuality is a right." We couldn't have said it better.