one can read in the newspapers advertising such as thisone: "we can rid
you from the burden of girls."

This gives evidence that scientific progress is not a guarantee
of more human rights. Throughout history, on has seen that science can
always provides the theories that are needed by gouvernments in power.
Example: in Soviet Union, Lyssenko was used against Mendel's theories.
In Germany, the Nazis had no trouble finding anthropologists to support
their racism. In France, when our government, under catholic pressure,
redused contraception, many doctors and physicians agreed to ban the Pill
as dangerous. They dismissed US experiences as not reliable. etc

Last example: China where baby-girls are still murdered. The
reasons have changer. It's not because families  hgave too many children,
but not enough. Under Chinese law, only one child is allowed and gets
help from the state for education. If that first child is a girl, families
are tempted to "let it die", in order to have a secon d try and maybe
give birth to the precious boy, who will later support his family and
maintain the ancestors-worship. Mrs Pai Yang, Minister of Family Planning,
had to modify the law for peasants, who need manpower for agriculture.
If their first child happens unfortunately to be a gril, they may have
a second child without losing the help of the State. "Our purposes, said
Mrs Pai Yang, is to diminish the drowoing of newborn girls, which is
still carried on in China."

I have too short a time to approach the question of sexual
mutilation that is going on in numerous countries through  Africa.
The estimation is that 80 million women are presently mutilated in their
countries or in the countries where they emigrate. If will juste evoke
the trial that has taken place in Parl's a weel agp; against a young
mother from Mali, 26 years old, 7 children. The eldest of haer 6
daughters had been taken to hospital when 10 days old for an infection
after huoaving her clitoris and labia cut off with a razor blade by an
African matron who had come from Mali to "purify" all the female children
of the district where the blachk immigrates live. She was sued by Rights
of children and Rights of Women associations, who denounced the fact that
20.000 little girls have been mutilated during the recent years in Paris
and its suburbs in spite of the French Law. Black doctors and African
feminists came to testify, underlining the disaster of excision and infi-
bulation, (which is the complete sewing of the vulva) for the health of
these women and their fecundity. It was a symbolic trial, especially for
the African nations, such as the Burkina Faso, which have began a difficult
campaign to change the traditional custom in the name of the dignity of
the human being and the right to integrity of one's body.

Since  WHO had condemned female  circumcision
8 years ago in the Khartoum Colloquim, France could not dismiss the