Cancer Patient Nikki Phelps vs. Virginity Repairs in Britain — i.e., Islamic Hymen Replacement Surgery

Doug Ross reports on the British cancer patient who fought the NHS, which denied life-saving drug treatment. "Nikki Phelps, R.I.P."

Nikki Phelp's insurer was Britain's National Health Service (NHS), the model for Barack Obama and his hand-picked appointment for the head of Medicare, Donald Berwick.

RTWT.

And at London's Daily Mail, "Virginity Repairs and an NHS That's Lost Its Way":

Three months ago, Bill Phelps became a widower — he watched, helpless, as his cancer-stricken young wife Nikki’s life slowly ebbed away.

Nikki, 37, a former teacher and mother of two-year-old twins, was denied the drug that might have saved her life, as it was deemed too costly by her NHS Primary Care Trust.

I wonder, then, how Mr Phelps feels after reading yesterday’s report that the NHS is happy to foot the bill for young women to have ‘virginity repairs’?

How can it be right that the mother of his two little boys was condemned to death by an NHS that put women’s desire to appear ‘untouched’ before the right of a mother to live as long as she can to raise her children?

Latest figures show that there has been a 25 per cent rise in hymen replacement operations carried out on the NHS over the past four years.

And, while there is no way of knowing the ethnic, cultural or religious background of the women undergoing these procedures, we do know that there has been a three-fold increase in Muslim women having the operation done privately — fearful that a future husband might discover they were not a virgin on their wedding night.

Might some of the rise in NHS cases be for the same reason? The NHS insists that it carries out the procedure only ‘to secure physical or psychological health’.

The same justification is often used for state-funded cosmetic procedures such as breast reductions.

Whatever the case, I find it astonishing that at a time when women are dying because they can’t get cancer treatment, other women are having their virginity repairs paid for by the State.

Let me be clear: I have every sympathy for a woman, of whatever cultural origin, who is so fearful of an oppressive partner that she would seek surgery to restore her ‘purity’.

We must never forget that it’s certain men who are to blame for this, as they demand a standard of behaviour from their wives, sisters and daughters that they would not dream of applying to themselves.

But how can we defend aesthetic breast procedures, sex- change operations or hymen repairs at a time of crippling national debt, and when we have some of the worst cancer survival rates in Europe?

RELATED: "A Victory Too Late: Mother Dies as the NHS Finally Agrees to Pay for Cancer Drugs."