Religious Special Pleading

Crap. A circumcision performed for (admitted) religious reasons is performed for religious reasons. End. Yeh, like I've said not quite a dozen time so far - the last time being the one you're replying to and have deliberately quote mined - non-medically required circumcisions should require the consent of the individual whose dick is being cut. My neighbour and your neighbour are not on the wrong side of a fictitious war, so yes it is an actual absolute. Or, does being a non-absolute in your mind make it wrong to intervene in someone's personal freedom to shoot your neighbour in the head for fun? How absurd are you going to get with this? So far it's further than FGM and getting towards murder.

Why would anyone think that they were? That's exactly why it should wait until they can. It is not happening in my street or yours. Nor in my country or yours. So is it ok to do it? Nope, what you're doing is evading and obfuscating. Where is you line? To the right of FGM; all the way to murder for fun? Where is it?

The premise of this thread is religious special pleading, male circumcision is simply one example. You're attempting to make it the entire thread. The fact that medical circumcision is sometimes necessary. Is irrelevant to a discussion about non-medically required circumcision. More obvious crap. By-and-large, people are fairly clear about whether they want their dicks slicing at a relatively early age - phd not required; age of majority is fine. I'm not, you are. Male circumcision is simply one example of religious special pleading. Male circumsion for religious reasons is child abuse - it will be stopped at some point because it's an obvious wrong. I'm not remotely interested in definitions, and I'm not falling into dictionary discussions. I'm stating quite flatly that it is absolutely wrong to shoot my neighbour in the head for fun and you're pratting around like this, pretending that it isn't? Do try to be honest, otherwise we're going to think you're a psychopath. That's exactly right. Your right to swing your izmel stops at the point of a child's dick.I see you're still evading the question, where do you intervene? I'm now saying it's way passed FGM, you would allow murder. Where do you stand? Do you stand or do you prefer to wave dictionaries around?

Of course you can. All surgical procedures carry risks, they're a last resort. Circumcisions for real medical reasons have benefits that outweigh the harm. Circumcision for religious/cultural reasons is an unnecessary harm. Yeh, I wonder why that is? Possibly because it's yet another diversionary irrelevance? The existence of medical procedures are irrelevant. I've given you examples of countries that have already banned religious/cultural circumcision. Is it a difficult political decision? sure. But is it also a wrong? Of course, that's why it will eventually be banned. Well yes, that's the point of the thread. I may have mentioned it before. You're wriggling. People will notice. You have already said that it's a parent's right.to cut their girl's clitoris off. I'm interested in how far you think it's ok for parents to do other things. At the moment you're equivocating about shooting your neighbour for fun so I guess that's our answer. If there was a law passed similar to the law on FGM, the parents would suffer the consequences of whatever punishment was deemed fit. UK law imposes a 14 year maximum sentence. Male circumcision is less damaging so I would expect it to be much less, but my guess would be that jail would certainly be possible. Yes. Parents would stop circumcising their children and everyone will live happily ever after..

I didn't. I've given you the objective evidence of the harm. You have been uable to refute it. No I'm not. Don't be silly. The freedom to harm a child is not a freedom parents should have. Ok, drop the shooting your neighbour thing - the question stands, where is your line? Do parents have the freedom to do what they like to their children? The fact that some ignorant people with primitive ideas will continue to harm their children until caught is not a reason to try to prevent the majority from doing so. Else we would have no laws at all.

So here we go again, right back to the start.
Every single baby/boy/youth/man that is circumcised suffers harm. They all bleed, all feel extreme pain and stress for some days. Some suffer complications such as sepsis and at least 200 die as a direct result every year in the US alone. (This number is under reported for the reason already given.)Where the hurt is to a consenting adult, there is no problem - this is, one hopes - a free, but really stupid choice. Adults are allowed stupid choices, but not for others. Of course I can. One is a procedure necessary for the health of the child, the other serves no medical purpose whatsoever. I'm banning it for religious and cultural reason for those unable to make an informed choice. Jews will claim this is religious discrimination, it's not, it's a child protection issue. Moreover, we ban FGM, this too could be labelled racial discrimination - the answer is the same. The harm to the child matters more than notional claims of discrimination. Don't be silly. Pain, suffering and death trips me up every time. We can and we do. We ban FGM for example. And some countries ban the male version too. So far you are saying that a parent's freedom to harm trumps a child's right not to be harmed. You are unable to deal with this criticism.

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Conducted in 2011 by independent researcher Tim Hammond and Adrienne Carmack, MD, the 44-question online survey explored physical, sexual, emotional, and self-esteem harm, as well as circumcision's impact on interpersonal relationships, compensatory behaviors, and foreskin restoration.

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Documented adverse outcomes include:

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meatal stenosis (narrowing of the urinary opening)
scarring
penile head keratinization
painful erections
skin bridges
sensory deprivation
premature or delayed ejaculation
erectile dysfunction
feelings of mutilation
negative self-esteem
medical mistrust
and parental or religious alienation.

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From the UK

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Manchester Royal Children's hospital reports that it treats around three cases of bleeding circumcisions every month. In 2009 alone, in one hospital in Birmingham, 105 boys were treated at A&E for complications after circumcisions. One per month had life-threatening injuries. In June, a letter to the newsletter of the British Association for Community Child Health reported on some of the injuries caused by unlicensed circumcision practitioners in the Bristol area. They included a fractured skull caused by a baby falling off a kitchen table during a home circumcision.

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An audit of circumcisions conducted at an Islamic school in Oxford, and reported in the Journal of Public Health this year, revealed that 45% of boys had suffered complications. All these examples have one common feature: they were conducted in non-clinical conditions. While it is illegal to tattoo a child in the UK, there is no law to prevent anyone from setting up a business in permanently slicing the sensitive, delicate skin from boys' genitals without anaesthetic. In Rusholme, Manchester, there is a notice on a first floor window offering circumcisions, quite literally in a backstreet above a kebab shop. This is utterly obscene.

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Still denying harm or should I find more?

Is this supposed to be some sort of argument? They only bleed and hurt if we cut their dicks. If we don't do that then they do not suffer. Point one is that ALL babies are harmed - that is very obvious and impossible to deny. I have also shown you the medical evidence for that in previous posts.Secondly, the research shows that it would be very easy to produce your million adults who now feel that they were harmed. Would that change your mind? Why 1 million? Why not 200 deaths per year in the US?Once again you neglect to comment on the evidence. Harm is exceptionally easy to demonstrate objectively - I have done this and you have been unable to rebut it. In fact you simply ignore it. Parents should not harm their children regardless of what nonsense they believe.

Why was it done?

This gives some background to the strange position the US got itself into.

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So what explains America’s fuss over foreskins? A closer look at how this religious rite became a national practice reveals some uncomfortable truths about health care in the US. Apparently, all it takes to popularize an elective preventative surgery with questionable health benefits is a mix of perverse incentives, personal bias, and ignorance.

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First, it helps to know a bit of history. Although religious practitioners have been snipping foreskins for thousands of years, the medical practice dates from the late 19th centurya time when the causes of most diseases were poorly understood. Mystified by everything from epilepsy to madness, some physicians in both America and England began to suspect that the real trouble was phimosis, a condition when an overly tight foreskin hinders normal function. By removing the foreskin, surgeons believed they could heal all sorts of maladies, from hernias to lunacy.

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Around the turn of the 20th century, American epidemiologists were also trying to explain why Jews lived longer than other groups of people. Jews tended to have lower rates of infectious diseases, such as syphilis and tuberculosis, in part because they had little sexual contact with non-Jews. But some scientists began to suspect their rude health was a product of circumcision.

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At the time, surgical interventions of all kinds were becoming more popular, owing to better anesthesia and greater concern over cleanliness, which reduced hospital contagion. Doctors began recommending the operation as part of the neonatal routine. Not only did the procedure prevent phimosis, but it was also believed to make the penis more hygienic and less tempting for wayward masturbating boys (a notion that might have been quashed by something known as the scientific method). As David Gollaher explains in his book Circumcision: A History of the World’s Most Controversial Surgery, a circumcised penis swiftly became a mark of distinction, a sign of good breeding, sound hygiene and the best medicine money could buy.

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In Britain, too, circumcision became a habit of the upper classes, including the royal family. Anyone who could afford to have a child delivered by a doctor rather than a midwife was keen to heed the latest scientific advice.

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But this changed in the UK with the launch of the publicly funded National Health Service in 1948. Because British doctors could not agree that circumcision was necessary, the practice was not covered. At a time when most Brits were financially strapped, few cared to pay for something that suddenly seemed frivolous. Circumcision rates swiftly dropped.

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In America, however, the postwar boom years created a glut of jobs, and employers often wooed workers with plush health benefits, which typically covered circumcision. A growing number of Americans could suddenly afford to give birth in hospitals, and routine infant circumcisions spiked.

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This helped entrench an elective medical practice, creating generations of foreskinless fathers and doctors who were inclined to believe it was best for their sons, too. It is a trend that America’s unwieldy fee-for-service health-care handily reinforces, as doctors and hospitals have incentives for offering interventions deemed unnecessary most everywhere else.

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Johnson, the University of Michigan professor of obstetrics and gynecology, observes that the procedure is highly remunerative for the pediatricians at his hospital.
I think the professional charge in our state is somewhere between $150-200, he says. That’s real money if you can do four or five circumcisions in an hour. In states where Medicaid does not cover the practice, rates have fallen fast.

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This is not to say that official bodies such as the CDC and AAP are issuing health guidelines with an eye on the bottom line. But it is important to recognize some of the cultural biases informing America’s embrace of circumcision.
When surgeries become the norm, the intuitive valuation of what’s at stake just shifts, says Brian Earp, associate director of the Yale-Hastings Program in Ethics and Health Policy. He notes that because most American physicians are circumcised and work in places where the surgery is common, they are more likely to look for reasons to support the practice than question it.

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As the procedure is both deeply personal and a bit taboo (no one really likes talking about genitals), few people even discuss it at all. Grown men who have never known life with a foreskin are disinclined to mourn it.

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Elsewhere, however, uncircumcised physicians are better placed to appreciate this elastic, functional sleeve of tissue, which is not only tremendously sexually sensitive but also handy for protecting the head of the penis from abrasion. Government-financed health care also squeezes out costly discretionary practices, making it easier for doctors in other developed countries to see that a prophylactic surgery on healthy, non-consenting infants is not quite the most conservative, least harmful way of achieving certain results. Some uncircumcised boys will still run the risk of phimosis, but the risk is rare. A new population-based study from Denmark, where most boys are uncircumcised, found that medical necessity forced a foreskin intervention in a mere .5% of Danish boys.

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Because there are less invasive ways to enjoy the negligible benefits of circumcision, some argue that the practice in America is unethical. They have a pointparticularly as the surgery permanently alters those who have no say in the matter. Parents may still wish to go through with it, for religious or cultural reasons. But it would be better if more Americans questioned a medical establishment that encourages a surgery that every other country in the industrialized world recognizes as unnecessary.

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Why is circumcision so popular in the US? Quartz

If you're going to flat out deny that cutting the skin of an 8 day old baby's penis doesn't cause bloodshed, pain and stress and that this process can and does lead to further complications, including death - despite the evidence presented demonstaring this - there's no point in further discussion.You're simply lying to yourself.

Do you deny circumcision harms children?

Do you deny FGM harms girls?

Do you think shooting your neighbour in the head harms him?

Actually, we're talking about harm.I'm trying to fathom what you consider harm to be. It doesn't include cutting a baby's penis and it doesn't include cutting off a girls clitoris (and associated parts). It may or may not involve shooting someone in the head - you don't seem to want to be clear about that.

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Circumcision has benefits as well as dangers,

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you've never attempted to make that case so I'll ignore it until you do. I have done so many times of course. Here's a reminder of just one

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Manchester Royal Children's hospital reports that it treats around three cases of bleeding circumcisions every month. In 2009 alone, in one hospital in Birmingham, 105 boys were treated at A&E for complications after circumcisions. One per month had life-threatening injuries. In June, a letter to the newsletter of the British Association for Community Child Health reported on some of the injuries caused by unlicensed circumcision practitioners in the Bristol area. They included a fractured skull caused by a baby falling off a kitchen table during a home circumcision.
An audit of circumcisions conducted at an Islamic school in Oxford, and reported in the Journal of Public Health this year, revealed that 45% of boys had suffered complications. All these examples have one common feature: they were conducted in non-clinical conditions. While it is illegal to tattoo a child in the UK, there is no law to prevent anyone from setting up a business in permanently slicing the sensitive, delicate skin from boys' genitals without anaesthetic. In Rusholme, Manchester, there is a notice on a first floor window offering circumcisions, quite literally in a backstreet above a kebab shop. This is utterly obscene.

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Edited by Tangle, : No reason given.

I disagree and so do several countries. Besides, the harm is self-evident. They do it for superstitious religious and cultural reasons. And I answered it. So you agree with Faith? The absolute harm is caused to every circumcised child when their dick is cut. This has been explained and the medical evidence provided. You have never refuted this because it's self-evident.Sometimes the harm that all receive ends in further complications and death. Isolated?

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An audit of circumcisions conducted at an Islamic school in Oxford, and reported in the Journal of Public Health this year, revealed that 45% of boys had suffered complications.

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Right, 45% of jelly bean eaters suffer from complications...best not to interfere, it's a matter of personal freedom?