Should non-medical circumcision of under-18s be banned?

You're just using circular logic and doesn't address the core issue

It has nothing to with sexual pleasure and your assertion that it does defeats your own argument.

I didn't say that, I said, I've been circumcised and I don't sit around and pant all day about the sensitivity of your penis.

That isn't for you to decide, you have no right to impose on me as parent what best interests are to my child

If the disadvantages of adult circumcision are so tiny, why is it medically advised to circumcise a few days from birth?

This is a direct attack on the Jewish and Islamic faiths.

That isn't for you to decide, you have no right to impose on me as parent what best interests are to my child

What, like your laughable "pain and risk" excuse

It doesn't need to be delayed,as a parent, what I see best for my child goes so long as I don't inflict any unnecessary injury, or any future complication that may hamper the use of the given organ.

I don't recall reading that. Where did you get that from?

Your language is I'm sure misleading because its certainly not the common practice as a rule.
Not 'medically' anyway.

I think you need to look up the meaning of 'direct'.

If the disadvantages of adult circumcision are so tiny, why is it medically advised to circumcise a few days from birth?

I suggest you do your research on the thing you are so strongly against.

And by that I don't mean research on the internet.

I find it disgusting that in the 21st century we still allow parents to mutilate the genitals of their children for ritualistic purposes. If an adult wants to have part of his penis removed for whatever reason, then let him go ahead, but to enforce it on a defenceless child is abhorrent. It's child abuse, it's sick, and it's a barbaric practice that needs to stop.

Actually, I suggest you do yours - because there are some strong arguments that adult circumcision is actually medically preferable to infant circumcision.

Perhaps rabbi thinks infant circumcision is best, but you know maybe that's because he has an agenda.


Here are some factors:

1. More precise with better outcome. Circumcision of an adult can be more precise and less risky than for the infant. This is because the adult penis is fully formed. Many plastic surgeons operate on the penis in the erect state because this way it is clear to what extent the skin is stretched during erection. In the infant, this more precise method cannot be employed. Also, based on the knowledge of his own penis, the adult patient can specify how much tissue to remove, the infant cannot. In terms of how much tissue to remove, there is much more guess work involved in the infant and often too much skin is removed. In adult circumcision precise instruments are used. In the infant, usually more cumbersome and less precise instruments like the Gomco clamp are used. The results of operating on a fully formed penis, in the erect state, with precise instruments by a trained surgeon, benefit the adult and not the infant.

2. Reduced risk of injury. For the same reasons mentioned above, injury to the penis is less likely in adult circumcision than in infant circumcision. It is less likely that too much or too little tissue will be removed and the chances of lacerating the glans itself are also minimized. Scarring is also reduced in the adult.

3. Reduced loss of sensitivity. Because in the adult, the penis has had many years to develop with a foreskin covering, the glans is fully sensitive at the time of the circumcision. The glans has grown with its protective covering and the foreskin has already separated naturally from the glans. This spares the adult some of the sensitivity loss that occurs when circumcision is performed at birth. At birth, the foreskin must be torn away from the glans to which it is normally adhered. Then, the denuded glans of the infant spends much time exposed to caustic urine while in diapers. In adult circumcision this early damage to the glans is avoided.

4. Personal choice. With adult circumcision the patient is making a personal choice to have himself circumcised. He has the option of comparing the pros and cons and has had the opportunity to know what having a foreskin is like. This eliminates the "lack of choice" objection made by critics. With elected adult circumcision, critics see no violation of rights.

5. Reduced potential psychological effects. With adult circumcision potential psychological effects are reduced. This is because the patient understands the experience. He knows why it is happening and that he has chosen this. Anesthesia is used in the adult and is usually omitted or ineffective in the infant. In contrast, the infant has an experience of inexplicable pain and terror which he cannot rationalize as an adult. Some speculate that this intensely painful experience for the infant can lead to problems later on. Although on the surface it may seem that an infant is less sensitive to or unaware of the circumcision experience, he does experience it fully and because of his very formative and psychologically sensitive age, the experience is thought to be potentially more impacting than it is for the adult.

source: http://www.cirp.org/library/anatomy/garcia/

I find it disgusting that in the 21st century we still allow parents to mutilate the genitals of their children for ritualistic purposes. If an adult wants to have part of his penis removed for whatever reason, then let him go ahead, but to enforce it on a defenceless child is abhorrent. It's child abuse, it's sick, and it's a barbaric practice that needs to stop.

I inquired at a hospital.

I'm fool enough to believe anything off the internet.

And can you please stop bringing religion into this. I don't care what religion has to do with it. When you bring religion into it, it just makes you seem like you justify your stance simply as 'it's religious, therefore it's bad'. Plenty of non religious people do it too.

Society does have rights to impose upon parents what the best interests of their child are. Clearly, as in the toe example.

And, medically speaking, if parents are not seen to be acting in the interests of their child, a representative for that child will be provided who may overule parental decisions.

If you find that wrong, you're the one whose out of sync with current mindsets on these kind of ethics, not me.

I suspect circumcision is only exempted from the same rules for fear of stirring up religious groups.




It isn't laughable. A small but significant number of circumcisions result in complications, including septicaemia, just like with any surgical procedure.
Circumcision is painful (I'm not talking during, but afterward in recovery). You can't remove a piece of skin without it hurting.

Those things aren't great enough that if an adult (or even a gillick-competent child) chooses to take them on that they aren't acceptable. But an infant does not choose to take them on.



Circumcision is an unneccessary injury, which very arguably affects functioning. Do circumcised penises function differently to those which are not? Almost irrefutably yes.
If the person affected considers that change to be positive, great.
But if the person affected considers that change to be negative, there you have it: you have hampered their use of the "given organ".

Beside it is wrong to make permanent decisions for someone else when they could just as easily wait.

A surgeon will not remove someone's diseased testicle when they are on the operating table, unless they deem the risk of a further anaesthetic to be great enough that it is very much in that person's best interests.
They will wait until that person is awake and ask them, even at a much greater inconvenience to that person - because it is not right to not give them the opportunity to refuse. It is a staple of medical ethics.

It's like.. someone finding something in your room and throwing it away without asking you. Whether it is a useless piece of junk or not, it's much better to wait until you see that person and ask them, because frankly - it isn't your junk to mess around with, and there is no harm in patience.

What you called up the hospital and asked?
Or you asked a consultant paediatric urologist? [as you do]


Whoever told you was wrong.

circumcision in not an injury.... not sure what sense you mean?
and how does a circumcised penis operate differently to a non-circumcised one.... Both can perform the function of micturition, and when of age can perform the act of copulation....

Sadly, I will have to choose to believe them over you, no offence to you, but you're not a 'consultant paediatric urologist' and neither am I.

In the taking a sharp object to flesh sense?
It's an injury to the penis. Don't interpret that really strongly though, getting your ears pierced is an injury, being cut open to allow surgical access is an injury.. it doesn't have to be bad or unjustified for that reason.

Circumcised penises function differently sexually, by almost all the accounts I have found. It would be impossible for them not to function differently, because not having movement of the foreskin is a functional difference. Again, that is not to automatically assume that that difference is negative or important.

My objection to circumcision of infants is because it denies consent. People have the right to autonomy over their own genitals, particularly in this instance because as I have said, functionality and injury (whether negative or positive down to personal opinion) is clearly involved. People have the right to autonomy over every aspect of their body.

Current ethical standards (with which I agree) deem that autonomy should only be overruled in instances where consent must be sacrificed or else an incompetent individual's best interests will be unmet. And the degree of interest really determines the degree of invasion into that person's autonomy.

It seems that in infant circumcision, autonomy is denied for no good reason at all. It seems a totally unjustified exemption. There is no serious harm involved in waiting for consent, quite the opposite.