Minnesota retreats from ban on female genital mutilation. Refugee advocates say bill is 'overly harsh'.

WND reports:

In Minnesota, the state’s Democratic leaders are perplexed by whether to advance a bill banning the barbaric, Third-World practice of female genital mutilation.

After first passing the bill unanimously in the state House last week, lawmakers are now having “second thoughts” about whether to continue pushing the bill through to the governor’s desk, according to a report in the Star-Tribune.

The bill’s GOP sponsor said her colleagues in the Senate have gone wishy-washy on the bill due to pushback from certain segments of the refugee-resettlement industry, which is very powerful in Minnesota, getting paid millions in federal dollars annually to distribute Somali refugees throughout the state.

The bill would crack down on parents who submit their daughters to the grisly procedure in which doctors remove all or part of a girl’s clitoris.

If passed, the bill would revoke parental custody and set a prison term of five to 20 years for any parent found guilty of having their daughter mutilated. The bill was introduced and quickly passed by the House following revelations last month that two Detroit-area doctors had been arrested and charged with practicing FGM on two 7-year-old Muslim girls from Minnesota.

Tolerance in "progressive" Minnesota.