This comment by Glen Hall on the post Why I Chose Not To Circumcise My Son
Well, at least this article is honest and forthright in its intent.
But it’s interesting… The author paints the AAP as flipping, but what the paragraph indicates factually is that, since 1971 (at least), the AAP has stated that the procedure is not a medical necessity, but it is beneficial. Over 40 years, their finding is that the benefits are anywhere from slim, to outweighing the risks.
According to the article cited, the decline in circumcision coincides with the rise of HIV/AIDS. It also includes discussion of a carcinoma which I have previously never heard linked to the circumcision debate… The more I read about people choosing not to circumcise, the more reasons I find to support circumcision.
So that’s the takeaway for me… I’m always going to support a parent’s rights to make medical decisions for the child, so I am against routine circumcision without informed consent. But being pro-choice also means protecting the other parents, the ones who read the same things the author read and say, “The anecdotal evidence on the issue doesn’t outweigh for me the benefits of potentially preventing HIV, HPV, and carcinomas, so I choose to circumcise.”
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Question of the Day
Is circumcision not subject to parent informed authority/decision and treated as any other similar medical procedure?
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I don’t think you are telling the truth. Virtually nobody circumcises for the “supposed health benefits”. They give that excuse but the real reason is so the kid will look like me or some other equally frivolous reason. So that makes you a butchering liar, sorry to say.
The crucial point is the phrase “other similar medical procedure”. There is not a lot of other similar medical procedure. I can not think of any, in fact. We have here an elective, non-reversible surgical modification whose health benefits are dubious at best (and yet touted to the point of ridiculousness by a few zealots), and which has noticable detrimental effects (especially on sexual pleasure) in many cases. Is there anything else like it? We have been assured time and time again that FGM can never, ever be compared to it, not even considering that there are degrees of that,… Read more »