The cabinet has approved a bill that increases prison terms to 5-7 years for individuals convicted of having performed FGM procedures; anyone who accompanies an FGM victim to the procedure would face a 1-3 year sentence, Ahram Online reported. The problem in Egypt runs deeper, as an assessment by researcher Amel Fahmy that we’ve covered previously suggested that harsher prison penalties are unlikely to reduce instances of FGM, making a similar case by quoting a doctor and parliamentarian who said “leaving women uncircumcised is unhealthy.” This was echoed similarly when a majority of women surveyed in a recently released Stanford study said that when they sought advice on FGM from physicians, they did not get an explicit rejection about having the procedure done. The study notes that “in nearly all cases, doctors did not explicitly reject the idea, but gave the women vague answers about the possible ‘need for the procedure.’”