Commentary In a controversial change to a longstanding policy concerning the practice of female circumcision in some African and Asian cultures, the American Academy of Pediatrics is suggesting that American doctors be given permission to perform a ceremonial pinprick or "nick" on girls from these cultures if it would keep their families from sending them overseas for the full circumcision. The academy's committee on bioethics, in a policy statement last week, said some pediatricians had suggested that current federal law, which "makes criminal any nonmedicai procedure performed on the genitals" of a girl in the United States, has had the unintended consequence of driving some families to take their daughters to other countries to undergo mutilation.
During the 1950s, the rate of routine infant circumcision leapt from 50 to 90 percent in response to the advice of medical doctors, like the author Dr. Benjamin Spock, who argued that it was beneficial. [...] in 1999, after decades of debate, the American Academy of Pediatrics issued a policy statement on circumcision stating, "Existing scientific evidence demonstrates potential medical benefits of newborn male circumcision; however, these data are not sufficient to recommend routine neonatal circumcision.
A ballot measure to ban circumcision in San Francisco has become a national punch line, but it's being taken seriously by religious groups who see the proposal as an attack on their faith. The measure, which won a place on the Nov. 8 city ballot after advocates gathered the necessary 7,143 signatures, would outlaw circumcisions on males younger than 18, except in cases of medical necessity, within city limits. Anyone convicted of performing circumcisions could be sentenced to a year in jail and a $1,000 fine.
Most people don't walk around thinking about circumcision. And they certainly don't think of a practice with roots in the book of Genesis as a political issue worth attention in these troubled times. Yet an activist group that wants to ban circumcision was recently able to gather enough petition signatures in San Francisco to put the proposal on the city ballot in November.
Circumcision, or bris milah , has long been the stuff of cheap jokes and comedy. But in recent weeks, what used to be nothing more than harmless fare has taken on a much more serious tone. So-called "intactivists" on the fringe left of American politics have pushed the radical notion that infant circumcision is an act of genital mutilation so unacceptable, in fact, that it ought to be illegal, with "no account taken . of any belief on the part of that person . as a matter of custom or ritual.
The written text of Svoboda' s presentation became the United Nation's first official document entirely devoted to the subject of male circumcision as a human rights violation and transformed the practice of male circumcision into an international human rights issue. A member of the Advisory Council for The Mens Center (http://themenscenter.com) and a senior board member of and Public Relations Director for the National Coalition of Free Men, a non-profit organization which works to educate individuals, policymakers, and institutions about the negative effects of gender discrimination upon men and boys, Svoboda is a performance artist, a tournament chess player who is rated as an expert by the United States Chess Federation, and the founder of the Bus Stop Co-op, a vegetarian organic c...
GOOD for Gov. Jerry Brown for signing Assembly Bill 768. It prevents California localities from criminalizing circumcision, which is what a group of people in San Francisco tried to do. The courts have consistently ruled that such religious and family matters are outside the government's legislative purview, as well they should be. What right do my elected representatives have to intrude on my privacy while tinkering with the Bill of Rights? Nevertheless, I still recall the day 50 years ago in New York City when my newborn son, Steven, was circumcised, and it isn't the happiest of memories.
By now, most Americans have heard the story of the Jewish holiday of Hanukkah many times, with its tale of a Greek king in ancient Syria (which included modern Israel) trying to eradicate the Jewish religion. He was thwarted by the guerilla warfare of the Maccabees, who liberated the ancient Temple in Jerusalem in the second century B.C. The story says they found enough oil to fuel the temple's ever- burning lamp just one night, but the small vial burned continuously for eight days until more was found, the reason Hanukkah lasts eight days and nights. But a
Two decades of research show women are less likely to contract a variety of sexually transmitted infections when their male partners are circumcised. But a recent Johns Hopkins University study examining 997 men in Uganda found that their female partners were more likely to contract HIV following a circumcision if the men ignored doctors' orders to abstain from sex until their wounds were fully healed, which usually takes about a month. And with the continued lack of a female-controlled HIV-prevention method-microbicide gels have yet to advance out of the trial phase-any HIV education effort must include a heavy emphasis on condom use. Spokespeople for the New York City Department of Health and Mental Hygiene and the Health and Hospital Corporation, which operates public clinics and hos...
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