Month: October 2020

an investigation : 1920: Shocked by the influx of immigrants from Southern & Eastern Europe, white upper class Americans have a crisis of cultural identity. They seek circumcision as a means of distinguishing themselves from poor immigrants that they perceived to be racially inferior, dirty, vulgar, & with disease carrying uncut penises. Circumcision elevated to a status symbol. D.L. Gollaher, (Phd, Harvard University), JOURNAL OF SOCIAL HISTORY, Volume 28, Number 1: Pages 5 – 36

Before we wade into the debate about circumcision facts and myths, consider this. Ask yourself if it’s ethical to force someone to surgically modify their body. Can you force another person to get a tattoo, a body piercing, or cosmetic surgery? Few reasonable people would vote yes to that. So when it comes to circumcision , there can be only one ethical choice. Parents really ought to leave that decision to the boy to decide, when he becomes an adult. After all, it’s his body being changed by circumcision and it will affect him later in life. It’s his life, and he should be the one allowed to make that decision. Parents like to think they are “saving” their son from having to do it later. They are not.

There are essentially three stakeholders involved with the decision to circumcise an infant. The baby-patient, the parent-guardian, and the doctor. The physician is supposed to be bound by ethical principles of beneficence (serve the best interests of patients and their families) and non-maleficence (“first, do no harm”). The standard of “serving the interests of families” can be a slippery slope as doctors can be forced to do things against their better judgement to appease parents. Pro-circumcision or religious advocates typically want babies circumcised immediately because older children and adults would opt out if given the opportunity. Discover more details about circumcision.

If the CDC guidance is followed, medical providers will be communicating a psychologically damaging message to boys with intact genitals—that their penises are somehow “bad” or inferior. The negative effects of such communications have been studied with regard to intersex children and have been found to be frightening, shaming, and embarrassing to the child (Rusch et al., 2000). This is a particularly cruel message to send to adolescents, many of whom are already experiencing concerns regarding body image. The circumcision of children has myriad negative psychological consequences that the CDC has failed to consider. This is being called circumcision’s psychological damage or harm. Removing healthy tissue in the absence of any medical need harms the patient and is a breach of medical providers’ ethical duty to the child. We believe that all people have a right to bodily autonomy and self-determination and deeply respect this fundamental tenet of international human rights law (UNESCO 2005). As children cannot advocate for themselves, they need adults to understand the complexities of their emotional experiences and provide them special protection. We oppose the CDC’s circumcision recommendation and encourage all parents to do the same in order to protect their children from physical and psychological harm.

Intaction was founded in 2010 out of the strong concern that the American “fee for service” medical and insurance business, its trade associations, PACS, and lobbyists, “the medical industry complex,” were intent on escalating their promotion of infant circumcision. Hospitals, insurance companies, and doctors profit from circumcisions. However Americans were starting to challenge the conventional wisdom of circumcising their sons. Seventeen states dropped Medicaid coverage for infant circumcision, deeming it unnecessary and cosmetic. The medical industry complex and its surrogates responded by launching a counterattack to prevent this threat to their income streams and maintain the status quo they built over many decades. (The most conspicuous evidence of this effort culminated in the 2012 AAP Circumcision Policy Statement – which blatantly stated three times, “Financing Newborn Male recommendation: newborn male circumcision warrant(s) third-party (insurance) reimbursement of the procedure.”) Find even more information on this website.