Why cut your sons? Mothers, spiritual leaders, doctors and children's rights activists are speaking out against circumcision of male and female children.
Why I Chose Not to Circumcise My Sons ~ 8 reasons.
"D" writes:
I thought I'd weigh in on this discussion, as I'm in the interesting position of being married to a Jewish man, and expecting a son (I'm not Jewish though).
We've decided that our son will NOT be circumcised - the first male in his family to not be done since Adam was a lad!
Our reasons are as "K" pointed out - it is purely a religious-cosmetic operation that is not necessary from a medical point of view. There are also significant risks attached, including mutilation of the penis. I remember seeing a doc on a man whose penis was horribly mutilated in a botched circumcision as a baby, and all the torment he had gone through. What's to say that *your son* isn't the next botched circ? Do you fancy the rest of his penis being removed, or him facing major restorative surgery and all the anguish that goes with it?
I'm simply not willing to take such an unnecessary risk with my son.
Please don't do this to your son! If it is really that desirable an operation, leave *him* to be the judge of that when he reaches adulthood, and he can get circ'd as a consenting adult, with anaesthetic. However, I somehow suspect he won't be keen to have the op done then, which makes me think that, if your baby boy could speak now, he would ask that you NOT do it to him. Putting his needs and wants before your own is always the best alternative. Give him the opportunity to make his own mind up about cosmetic surgery to his penis when he is an adult, instead of taking that choice away from him as a baby.
(Written in response to a mama concerned that there is a higher risk of penile cancer and UTIs in uncircumcised males than in circumcised males)
Not every study has shown such statistics. Check out this link on cancer risks.
Your daughter is more likely to develop breast cancer than your son is to develop penile cancer. Would you consider removing a newborn's breasts as a good preventative measure? Especially when the cancer we speak of doesn't appear for 20-40-60 years...?
On UTIs check this link.
Again, a daughter is more likely to develop a UTI than a son and yet no one suggests that surgery is a good way to prevent female UTIs...
The defense of circumcision has all come after the practice was well established, it wasn't something that well-designed studies discovered in the first place. Have you read "FROM RITUAL TO SCIENCE: THE MEDICAL TRANSFORMATION OF CIRCUMCISION IN AMERICA" yet?
American medicial circumsicion began in response to symptoms and quickly became fashionable with Jewish doctors who liked feeling that their religious rituals had "science behind them". When we compare circumcised Americans to their intact European bretheren, we see that routine infant circumcision isn't the "cure-all" turn-of-the-century American doctors thought it was.
The more you read, the less appealing the whole idea becomes...
For those who simply cannot buck tradition and avoid circumcising their little guys, I ran across an interesting paper recently that reported on a religious circumcision of an infant where the women in the family (who weren't thrilled with the idea but went along with it anyways) created a powerful ceremony/ritual blessing circle of their own for the child just after the circumcision ritual was finished and the baby was returned to mama.
The women took turns offering blessings to the child and one of the central ones was, "May you never experience any more pain in your life than you've experienced today". I thought that was a pretty cool idea for women who chose not to buck the system.
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