If ever there was a bipartisan cause in this country, shouldn’t it be banning female genital mutilation? Well, a bill banning FGM in the state of Maine was just voted down — along party lines.

As Townhall‘s Elizabeth Yore reports, “69 GOP (and 1 Dem) [voted] for the bill and 77 Dems and Independents [voted[ against an FGM bill that would criminalize female genital mutilation.”

Yore continues: “The Democratic House legislators who voted against this FGM bill curiously argued that ‘FGM doesn’t happen in Maine,’ despite the fact that Maine is one of only eight federal pilot programs to address the exponential growth of FGM in America. If little girls in Maine are not at risk for FGM, then why is Maine receiving more than $200,000 a year from the federal government to help prevent FGM?”

Even if the Democrats’ claim, that “FGM doesn’t happen in Maine,” was true, what is the objection to banning the practice before it arrives there? In reality, this common practice in the Muslim world is being committed in the United States by immigrant populations.

Keep in mind that Democrats are supposedly the “party of women.” They’re the party that likes to pretend all women think as a monolithic block. Why, then, would Democrats vote unanimously against a bill that outlaws a horrific practice which only victimizes women?

Honestly, I have no answer.

But this vote does tell me that bipartisanship is now functionally impossible to achieve in the United States. If Maine’s Republicans and Democrats can’t work together on legislation like this, then what hope is there for cooperation on anything?

The path of polarization chosen by the increasingly totalitarian Left causes me to now think fondly of the days the Left at least called for bipartisanship, even if the intention was really to force the other side to sit down, shut up, and do as they’re told. If they can’t work together to ban female genital mutilation, then extreme votes like this are America’s future.