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Female circumcision and obstetric complications
1Department of Population and International Health, Harvard School of Public Health, Boston, MA, USA. ularsen@hsph.harvard.edu
Objectives:
To examine whether complications at delivery are associated with female circumcision.
Method:
One thousand eight hundred and fifty-one women seeking family planning or antenatal care in three south-west Nigerian hospitals were interviewed and had a medical exam. The prevalence of complications at delivery for uncircumcised women and circumcised women with type 1 (partial or total removal of the clitoris) or type 2 (partial or total removal of the clitoris and part or all of the labia minora) were determined. Associations between self-reported complications at delivery and clinic-reported type of circumcision were analyzed using bivariate and multivariate logistic regression.
Result:
Forty-five percent were circumcised; 71% had type 1 and 24% had type 2. Circumcised women had significantly higher risks of tearing and stillbirths when all pregnancies were analyzed.
Conclusion:
Circumcised women experienced more obstetric complications, while there was no significant difference between women with type 1 and type 2.
