ST.-DENIS, France – Miriam clearly remembers the day she was cut, bundled by two village women into a bathroom at the age of 7, where a third performed the procedure. “It was very, very painful,” the young Malian woman says softly, as her two tiny children pinch her cheeks, crying for attention.

NAIROBI, Kenya - International rights groups, churches and activists are escalating campaigns against female genital mutilation now that a new practice has emerged in which girls are checking into hospitals to have the procedure.