''At first, the doctors hesitated, saying, 'We cannot betray families,' '' said Linda Weil-Curiel, a lawyer who is France's leading crusader against the practice. ''I said, 'Your first obligation is to the child. If you do not report a family when you notice they practice excision, then the next child born will be excised, too. You bear the responsibility.' ''

The Congressional push to outlaw genital cutting in the United States was led by a handful of senators and representatives. Senator Reid, the point man in the Senate, said he first lost sleep over this issue in 1994 after CNN broadcast a video of a 10-year-old Egyptian girl being cut.

''They grab her and hold her down and rip out her genitalia with a razor blade,'' Senator Reid said, adding that he thought of his two young granddaughters at the time. ''I said, 'What am I going to do about this?' All my staff advised me to stay away from it. You have to be careful on issues like this. Is this something a man should be involved in?

''The first time I talked about it on the floor, I felt very uncomfortable. You're talking about a little girl's vagina.''

Representative Schroeder, who is to retire from the House of Representatives after the New Year, has been working on the issue for more than 20 years.

Both said in recent years that they have been unable to get a ban through Congress. They said some members simply could not believe that the practice actually goes on. And some were worried that it would lead to proposals to abolish male circumcision.

This year, they said, their years of pestering their fellow lawmakers, combined with greater press attention to the issue, including a series of articles in The New York Times, and the Republican-controlled Congress's desire to counter the tendency of female voters to support Democrats, led to passage of the law.