The executive announced its intention to penalize the controversial practice of virginity certificates, as claimed by the international medical community, but doctors from Seine-Saint-Denis oppose it, citing the “distress” of certain young girls from Muslim families.
If the National College of French Gynecologists (CNGOF), like the Order of Physicians and the World Health Organization (WHO), advocate the prohibition of these certificates sometimes requested before a religious marriage, doctors on the other hand, see it as a way of “protecting” young girls. And insist on the small scale of the phenomenon.
“The problem is not the certificate but the girl in distress”
“Obviously, we are all against the virginity certificate! The problem is not the certificate but the girl in distress who comes to ask for it. If we do not give her a certificate, she will be examined by a matron and will have to anyway to justify oneself “, underlines Dr. Claude Rosenthal, president of Gynécologie sans frontières.
“We will not get out with legislation but education,” said Emmanuelle Piet, doctor in Seine-Saint-Denis and president of the Feminist Collective Against Rape. “For 50 years”, it has issued “four to five certificates per year” on average.
“It is not the certificate that helps them, it is above all a means of relieving pressure from the family, and it can also make it possible to make a report to the prosecutor. It happened to me for a young girl that her parents wanted to return home to marry her “
“There are also the girls who have been camouflaged and helped to leave their families,” explains this committed woman, member of the High Council for equality between women and men.
In his eyes, the ban on these certificates constitutes “imbecility”. “I can not even understand the logic: only 0.3% of rapists are convicted and we will penalize colleagues who help girls, it’s crazy!”, She annoys. “In France, 125,000 women are sexually mutilated and there are 40 trials a year”, she adds, urging the government to look into “real problems”.
“Humiliating scrolls”
Now retired, Dr Rosentahl indicates that in his career he has issued two certificates of this type to teenage girls when he worked in Brive-la-Gaillarde.He believes that the future penalization of doctors is a “shame”. “We go back, it’s as if we penalized abortion. We will no longer see in consultation these girls who need help,” he fears, recalling that the issue of early marriage affects 15 to 20,000 young girls per year.
The position of these caregivers is at odds with that of the National College of French Gynecologists and Obstetricians, which has been advocating for several years the prohibition of these “humiliating scrolls” for women.
“Some colleagues do it either to protect women, or sometimes for money, or because patriarchy suits them well,” regrets Israel Nisand, its president.
“If there is no one left to establish such a certificate”, the women who claim it “will not suffer violence”, estimates the gynecologist, who is however delighted that this “practice has become rare”.
Midwife for eleven years in Seine-Saint-Denis, Mathilde Delespine has never been confronted with the subject. “The question of the injunction to virginity, with this imperative of the blood stain on the sheet – not only in the Muslim community for that matter – comes up very often in consultation, but I have never been asked for a certificate” , she explains.
Referent “intra-family violence” at the Maison des femmes de Saint-Denis, she adds that she “never heard of any business related to these certificates”.
Like her, the gynecologist Ghada Hatem, founder of this Women’s House, said in the media that the ban on these certificates “did not make sense”.
For Mathilde Delespine, it is about “a political debate, sterile, which will stigmatize a part of the population and caregivers”. “Penalizing caregivers is even an insult and a provocation, given the current health context. The hospital is bloodless and gynecologists have died of Covid,” she blows.
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