It is the year 423 BC and orders have just been sent: every woman must be circumcised. The new Pharaoh is said to be not very gifted and wants the women of his country to be circumcised to increase his sexual pleasure (qtd. in Gruenbaum 43). Although such a tale seems funny, female circumcision and its effects are real. . Female circumcision is believed to have existed for at least twenty centuries (Gruenbaum 193). Despite its age, female circumcision has only recently been discussed and debated in the United States. Indeed, the issue itself had not really been examined nationally until 1975, “when the Australian delegation to the first United Nations conference on women in Mexico City proposed a motion of condemnation” (Greer 64). Since that time, opposition to female circumcision has been included as part of American human rights policy (Mackie 999). The U.S. Agency for International Development is also assisting “African organizations working to eradicate it” (qtd. in Mackie 999). Now the world knows about female circumcision and wants to do something about it, but the change will not come suddenly because of its long tradition. Female circumcision is the cutting or removal of the female genitalia. According to msn.com, female circumcision is "the practice of circumcising adolescent women in some cultures that generally involves surgical removal of the clitoris or suturing of the vaginal opening." There are many different names for this practice. Some call it “female genital mutilation” and others call it “female genital cutting.” Often women who practice female circumcision are extremely offended by such terms; therefore the simplest and least offensive way to refer to...... central part of the article ......re: Patient care and child protection." BMA. 2001. 3 November 2003. Greer, Germaine. “Why Genital Cutting Continues.” Newsweek International. (1999): 64. Gruenbaum, The Female Circumcision Controversy convention report." American Sociological Review. 61 (1996): 999-1017. Nour, Nawal. "Female Circumcision and Genital Mutilation: A Practical and Sensitive Approach." Contemporary OB/GYN. 45 (2001): 50-55. Pulsipher, Abigail Personal Interview 2001. Walker, Alice, Pratibha Parmar Marks of the Warrior: Female Genital Mutilation and the Sexual Blinding of Women New York: Harcourt Brace & Company, 1993.