France Moves to Criminalize Virginity Certificates, Challenging Global Practice

The issue under the theme of "separatism" had been publicly mentioned on February 18, 2020 by President Emmanuel Macron. Then some ministers spoke out on the matter. They see it as a sad way of objectifying women. "Some doctors still dare to certify that a woman is a virgin to allow a religious marriage, despite the condemnation of these practices by the Order of Physicians. We will not only formally prohibit it, but propose criminalization," Gérald Darmanin, the Minister of the Interior, and Marlène Schiappa, the Minister Delegate for Citizenship, had declared, reports TV5.

The virginity certificate is a document issued after an examination of the woman’s genitals to verify if the hymen is intact. The absence of the hymen means that the girl has already lost her virginity. Yet practitioners know that the hymen can have been broken for many reasons such as the practice of intense sports, or because the woman was born without this membrane. But a certificate that does not prove the presence of this hymen can dishonor the woman in the eyes of her parents, her in-laws.

Given the tensions this creates in some families and the discrimination against certain women, the French Order of Physicians called in 2003 for doctors to no longer issue such a certificate. For the Council, it "has no medical justification and constitutes a violation of the respect for the personality and intimacy of the young woman forced by her entourage to submit to such a thing." In Belgium too, the Belgian Council of the Order of Physicians has expressed the same view. It supported that no one can "state with certainty on the basis of a clinical examination that a person has never had sexual intercourse," reports TV5.

The WHO agrees. In October 2018, it produced a report that stresses that this practice is "medically useless, humiliating and traumatic" for women. According to the Organization, this tradition is listed in at least twenty countries in the world, in Europe the countries concerned are France, Belgium, the Netherlands, Spain and Sweden. In Morocco, the law has remained silent on the practice but the phenomenon is very widespread. But in 2019, many doctors decided to no longer provide such a certificate.

In France, the National College of Gynecologists and Obstetricians is in favor of this ban and is calling for criminal sanctions against the doctors involved. "I have been asking for the criminalization of this gesture for a very long time. These certificates do not constitute medicine, they assign women to their rank of object," fumes Israël Nisand, the president of the College. For Ghada Hatem, medical director of the Maison des Femmes de Saint-Denis, the issue is very delicate for gynecologists.

She points out that sometimes she is forced to issue the certificate to women without even examining them. "If she needs a paper saying she’s a virgin to save her life, to stop bothering her, I do it," she explains. She adds that she does not understand the government’s desire to want to settle the issue, "as if it were France’s number one problem, secularism and integration." These are words that have earned her insults on social networks. Some of her colleagues have asked for her to be removed from the medical order.

Despite the criticism, Ghada Hatem remains imperturbable. She explains that every time these women come to her office asking for help, she will make it her duty to help them if it can save their lives.