CNN Law Center - A Proposed Bill to Ban Circumcision

[Tanibani]

http://www.cnn.com/2005/LAW/04/08/co...ion/index.html

Sherry Colb
FindLaw Columnist
Special to CNN.com
Friday, April 8, 2005 Posted: 4:49 PM EDT (2049 GMT)

(FindLaw) -- A San Diego, California-based group that calls itself a health and human rights organization recently submitted a proposed bill to Congress called the Male Genital Mutilation Bill ("MGM bill"). The bill, if adopted, would ban the practice of circumcising baby boys.

If circumcision turns out to be what medical professionals are saying that it is -- unanesthetized amputation from a newborn child of living, healthy tissue flush with nerve endings, for no medically beneficial result -- then it might seem quite proper to prevent parents from subjecting their infants to this cruelty.

Yet there is a worry, and it is significant. The worry is that perhaps, out of the many painful things that people do to their children, the law could be singling this one out for prohibition at least in part because the practitioners are religiously motivated, and the religions in question are minority religions in the United States.

The author makes a comparison to Nazi Germany where they singled out Kosher slaughter - not out of concern for animals, but to specifically single out/punish Jews.

So now intact activists are solely out to persecute Jews/Muslims??? Is that what she is getting at?

She is contradicting herself. Banning FGM is good (even thought it's a cultural practice, that singles out a small group) but banning circ isn't.

Does this mean that religiously motivated practices should be immune from legal intervention, no matter how harmful and abusive? Of course not. The ban on female genital mutilation, in fact, is a good example of appropriate legislation banning a practice embraced by a minority in this country for a combination of religious and cultural reasons. The costs to girls and women who have suffered the procedure are just too great to permit it to continue.

But male circumcision is different. Though professionals have (with some hedging and ambivalence) decided to oppose the practice, it does not pose the obvious risks and harms of FGM. Until we can say with certainty that circumcision is truly harmful to children in a lasting way, we should probably leave it alone.

That last quote shows that more education is needed.



I don't know what (or how long) it's going to take for Americans to "get it."

Being anti RIC is not being anti-Semetic.

[Frankly Speaking]

I've seen that one before. The thrust is to maintain the status quo until we figure out that there is sexual damage, circumcision accidents, botched circumcisions, men with painful after effects, damage to women and even deaths from circumcision. I wonder how many coroner's reports and death certificates would have to be placed before her for her to determine it is time to abandon the status quo.

I've seen it asserted that circumcision deaths are very rare and deaths from surgical complications are unavoidable. However, surgeries are done to achieve positive results and that is where circumcision departs. There are no positive results from routine neonatal circumcision. NONE! Regardless of how people try to twist it and how many "necessary" circumcisions they have heard of, there are no positive results of neonatal circumcision. PERIOD!

Even if there had only been a single child's death, that's one too many. However, thousands have died from this cosmetic procedure they did not choose but was instead forced on them. There is no way of knowing how many millions of men have been harmed to the point they can not participate in sex or how many have had their sex lives cut decades short because of circumcision induced impotency.



Frank