Call The Midwife is to tackle the controversial issue of female genital mutilation, with a storyline set among the East End’s Somali community.
The BBC One drama will take a sympathetic look at the plight of a young woman who has undergone the procedure.
Heidi Thomas, the screenwriter, said she had wanted to include the storyline for some time but had to wait until the drama reached the early 1960s, when “appropriate cultural communities” had settled in east London.
“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,” she told Radio Times.
FGM is illegal in the UK, and nearly 6,000 new cases were recorded in England last year. But Thomas said her show would not make a moral judgment about the practice.
“We are a medical drama, not a moral drama. We are not judging this woman,” she said. “You do have to be careful not to impose a modern mindset on the attitude of either the white characters or the Somalian women in that part of the story.”
http://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/201...nfronts-female-genital-mutilation-new-series/
The BBC One drama will take a sympathetic look at the plight of a young woman who has undergone the procedure.
Heidi Thomas, the screenwriter, said she had wanted to include the storyline for some time but had to wait until the drama reached the early 1960s, when “appropriate cultural communities” had settled in east London.
“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,” she told Radio Times.
FGM is illegal in the UK, and nearly 6,000 new cases were recorded in England last year. But Thomas said her show would not make a moral judgment about the practice.
“We are a medical drama, not a moral drama. We are not judging this woman,” she said. “You do have to be careful not to impose a modern mindset on the attitude of either the white characters or the Somalian women in that part of the story.”
http://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/201...nfronts-female-genital-mutilation-new-series/
