‘Call the Midwife Season 6’ Goes Controversial With Genital Mutilation Ritual

"Call the Midwife Season 6" is guaranteed a space among social networking sites after its controversial episode on genital mutilation. This is indeed unchartered territory for the Nonnatus House sisters but the production handled it will.

The genital mutilation episode of 'Call the Midwife Season 6" showed midwives Barbara Gilbert played by Charlotte Ritchie, and Valerie Dyer played here by Jennifer Kirby, examining a pregnant Somalian woman named Nadifa who is played by Yusra Warsama. The examination showed that Nadifa had been cut, a procedure referred to as genital mutilation.

This episode of "Call the Midwife Season 6" puts into focus the cultural ritual of intentionally removing the external genitals of a woman without any medical reason at all. Female Gender Mutilation (FGM) is widely practiced among young girls in Africa and the Middle East even if it is considered a human rights violation.

"I have been interested in FGM for some time and it did seem to me that if we waited until 1962, the Somali community were beginning to settle and establish a foothold in the East End," "Call the Midwife" writer Heidi Thomas said. "I thought this would be a fascinating story, as it would be the first time our midwives would have seen this process. It would provide a very interesting crunch point between two cultures and of course it is now a very hot topic, quite rightly."

"Call the Midwife Season 6" got a lot of help from anti-FGM campaigner Nimco Ali for the episode on genital mutilation, according to The Guardian. Ali, who got her genitals mutilated at seven years old, said the "Call the Midwife Season 6" episode would probably ruffle some feathers even if it was written with immense knowledge.

The genital mutilation episode of "Call the Midwife Season 6" hopes to create widespread awareness on the ritual. It is unfortunate to note that around 6,000 new cases of genital mutilation were recorded in England last year even if it is considered illegal in the United Kingdom.

Thomas, however, said "Call the Midwives Season 6" would not judge the practice on moral grounds in its effort not to judge women by virtue of their cultural practices, according to Telegraph. After all, "Call the Midwife Season 6" is a medical and not a moral drama and it does not want to impose the mindset of the modern world on its characters.