For the third year in a row, Simenesh Comollo, a survivor of female genital mutilation, has appeared before lawmakers to testify in support of a bill that would ban the practice in the state of Connecticut. She hopes she won’t have to testify again. “It is heartbreaking to know that there is still no clear law in place here in our state addressing this. I have lived in Connecticut for over 15 years. This is my home,” she told the legislature’s Judiciary Committee last week.  The proposal has drawn bipartisan support, but it has yet to make it through votes in both chambers of the legislature.  An act prohibiting female genital mutilation was first raised in Connecticut in 2018; it did not pass out of committee. In 2019, a bill requiring the Department of Public Health and the University of Connecticut to study female genital mutilation in the state was rejected by the Senate. Then-Sen. Marilyn Moore, D-Bridgeport, said at the time there was no reason to believe female genital mutilation was a problem in Connecticut and that a federal law already existed criminalizing it.  In 2020 and 2021, bills relating to female genital mutilation were raised but did not pass out of committee. Then, in 2025, a bill criminalizing the practice made it through the Senate but was never called for a vote in the House. For survivors like Comollo, returning year after year to testify has reopened emotional scars that she worked hard to make peace with.  “ It’s been incredibly frustrating, to be honest, and emotionally exhausting,” she said. “Each time I give a testimony, I have to revisit something I worked so very hard to heal from.”  Sen. Gary Winfield, D-New Haven, co-chair of the Judiciary Committee, said there was an “evolution” in the legislature regarding the issue of FGM. At first, he said, the legislature shied away from the issue, raising questions about its connection to certain religious practices. He said lawmakers started to support the idea once people with lived experience began testifying in support of the proposal. But the bill still hasn’t been prioritized, he said, because of more immediate challenges the legislature has faced.  The bill would make genital mutilation of a girl under age 18 a class D felony. It would allow children under 12 to testify outside the courtroom with a trusted adult present, and it would allow a child to file a lawsuit against their parent if they experienced FGM. It would allow individuals who experienced female genital mutilation as a child to file a lawsuit within 30 years after they turn 18.  Winfield said he supports the bill but he’s unsure whether it will pass, given the short timeframe of this year’s session.  Sen. John Kissel, R-Enfield, who has supported the bill in the past, said during the public hearing that he doesn’t understand why Connecticut remains one of only nine states without a law criminalizing the practice.  “It’s actually a very odd thing,” Kissel said. “To have 41 other states take the lead on this, we are an outlier. We’re one of nine. “I don’t know what it is about Connecticut that we just can’t get this done to protect young women from having their bodies mutilated,” Kissel said.  Lived experience Zehra Patwa, a survivor of FGM and founder of the organization WeSpeakOut, which advocates for an end to the practice, said she thought the bill would have passed both chambers last year if it had been called for votes. Patwa said she understands the value of having survivors speak to lawmakers. At the same time, she said, it’s an incredibly difficult task. Some survivors risk disapproval from their communities for coming forward, she said. “I try to keep my composure while I’m testifying, but I have fallen apart the last two times I’ve done it. It’s a really hard thing to do,” she said. Patwa, who was born in the U.K. and has lived in Connecticut since the 1990s, is a member of the Bohra community, an ethnic group that resides mainly in India, and in which a form of female genital mutilation is practiced.  Patwa said that while she has no memory of undergoing FGM, she found out that she was a survivor in 2014. A maternal aunt told her that at age 7, during a trip to India, she had undergone the procedure. After speaking with more than 80 people in her community, including her parents, Patwa discovered that nearly all of them had been cut.  She said initially she felt angry and betrayed, but she decided to focus her energy on making sure that other people wouldn’t have to go through the same trauma and suffering. Comollo, who is from Ethiopia, said she also has dealt with her emotional pain through speaking with other survivors and through advocacy. When she feels disheartened, she said, she thinks about why she does this work — for young girls who cannot speak out, and for girls in the future who will be protected from the practice.  “If I am blessed with a daughter, I want her to be proud of her mother. I want to be able to tell her that I chose to speak up — that even while my wounds were still healing, and even after they had healed, I used my voice,” Comollo told the Judiciary Committee.  Patwa said it’s difficult to know how many people in Connecticut have been affected by FGM. The Population Reference Bureau estimated in 2013 that about 2,600 girls in Connecticut had either undergone or were at risk for FGM/cutting. Patwa said she believes that could be a significant undercount.  Katherine McKenzie, the director of the Yale Center for Asylum Medicine, which conducts physical evaluations of people who are applying for asylum, said her organization typically encounters one or two cases a year of female genital mutilation. McKenzie said women who have been subjected to gender-based violence can suffer health consequences like high-risk pregnancies, infertility and a lack of pleasure in sexual intercourse. It can also put women at risk for PTSD, depression and anxiety, McKenzie said. The importance of state legislation Mariya Taher, co-founder and executive director of Sahiyo, a nonprofit fighting female genital mutilation, said the existence of state legislation outlawing the practice helps to counter beliefs in certain communities that female genital mutilation is necessary for girls. Laws can also provide support for parents who don’t want their daughters to go through it, Taher said.  “A law can help uplift that, ‘No, we’re recognizing this as a form of harm’ and … it can be a prevention tool as well, particularly for communities and individuals where there’s community pressure,” said Taher, who spearheaded a 2020 bill passed in Massachusetts banning the practice.  Patwa and Taher both said they believed FGM/cutting had been conflated into debates about gender-affirming care, which they cited as another possible reason it had stalled in the Connecticut legislature.  Winfield disagreed.  “While [gender-affirming care] is something we don’t really want to color this issue, I don’t know that that is a barrier to getting it done,” he said.  Taher said Connecticut’s bill is still missing an important component — education. She said people living in Western countries often distance themselves from the practice, believing that it only happens in other parts of the world. She said the silence around the practice can be one of the factors that allows it to continue.   Comollo said banning FGM is about bodily autonomy, safety and dignity, and it should be treated with the same urgency as domestic violence and human trafficking. She also said it’s important not to see it as an “immigrant issue.” Many immigrants, like her, have lived in the U.S. for decades, were educated here and planned to raise children here. “This is not just a foreign problem,” she said. “This is our home.”  ...read more read less