Just days after criminal charges were filed against a rabbi in Germany for performing circumcisions comes major news from Yair Rosenberg in Tablet magazine: America’s leading group of pediatricians is set to endorse the procedure. Rosenberg writes:
A leaked copy of the new American Academy of Pediatrics’ policy statement on circumcision, scheduled to be released on Monday, reveals a change in the prestigious medical body’s previous position (set in 1999) on the medical benefits of the procedure from “neutral” to “pro.” It details how a comprehensive evaluation of research from the last 15 years demonstrates that the medical benefits of circumcision—including “prevention of urinary tract infections, penile cancer, and transmission of some sexually transmitted infections”—outweigh the risks.
The importance of this cannot be overstated. The AAP is a driving force behind health policy in America, and the experts involved in its new statement are already going on record in major media outlets to advocate that circumcision be covered on public health plans like Medicaid. The statement solidifies the scientific consensus behind the advisability of infant male circumcision (noting that complications are more likely to arise when the procedure is performed later in life) and places the traditional practice squarely within the realm of sound medical science.
For Rosenberg’s whole report and the full text of the AAP’s statement, see here. This news obviously affects Jews and Muslims more than Christians, as the Christian perspective on circumcision is mixed. Given the Gospel message that salvation comes through faith, not through circumcision or other commandments of the Jewish law, it is not a traditional practice for Christians.
Citing the nullification of “the legal prescriptions of the old Testament or the Mosaic law” and warning against placing’s one eternal hope in them, the Catholic Church condemned circumcision in the 1442 Bull of Union with the Copts. It denounced “all who after (the promulgation of the Gospel) observe circumcision, the sabbath and other legal prescriptions as strangers to the faith of Christ and unable to share in eternal salvation, unless they recoil at some time from these errors.”
With the discovery of circumcision’s health benefits, however, this teaching faded from view, and the Church’s current stance toward circumcision is neutral. (It is not a religious obligation because it’s not related to salvation, but it’s not prohibited because it may promote health.) Some Catholics argue that, soteriology aside, the prohibition against deliberately mutilating the body would forbid circumcision; others cite circumcision’s therapeutic benefits and regard the practice as at least not intrinsically immoral.
The Protestant Reformers generally shared the New Testament and early Catholic view. Martin Luther argued against circumcision, emphasizing that it was not necessary or helpful for salvation: “Moses and all the prophets testify that circumcision did not help even those for whom it was commanded, because they were of uncircumcised hearts. How, then, should it help us for whom it was not commanded?”
Yet Protestants along with Catholics now seem more open to the practice. David Neff offered a useful primer on Christian attitudes towards circumcision in Christianity Today last summer. After noting centuries of opposition, he attributes the recent shift to health campaigns and notes the simultaneous decline in anti-Semitism. His conclusion seems sensible:
Circumcision played an important role in changing Anglo-American attitudes toward Judaism. It prepared us for the recent theological emphasis on the significance of the body. Christians are exploring Jewish practices they once despised. Sabbath rest, particularly, has benefits that bridge the spiritual and the physical. So does biblical thinking and practice about sex and food. The current debate on circumcision is an opportunity to explore the sanctification of the body and to think about the things that connect Christians to—and disconnect them from—the physical children of Abraham.
August 24th, 2012 | 12:49 pm
Well then. I suppose the question we ought to ask is whether Flannery O’Connor opined about this topic in The Habit of Being.
August 24th, 2012 | 12:58 pm
What if the gynecologists recommand next week that women’s breast be removed for the very humanitarian reason of preventing breast cancer? Now you see better the gender bias in the procirc position.
For what regards gods ans divinities, I definitively don’t trust those who command under the belt.
August 24th, 2012 | 1:16 pm
So, now the American Academy of Pediatrics has been taken in by the nefarious plot of ancient, cruel religious practices…..the conspiracy goes much deeper than we all thought.
(Snark intended)
August 24th, 2012 | 1:53 pm
It’s AAP vs their counterparts in the rest of the industrialized word. I’ll stick with those from countries without abysmal child and maternal mortality rates.
August 24th, 2012 | 2:27 pm
… … In case anyone is wondering how & why circumcisions exist, let us go to The Holy Bible, The Old Testament, Genesis 17:5 – 15 when God (Jehovah) enters into a contract with Abram, changes his name to Abraham, and promises to make him “Father of Nations”.
Circumcisions have nothing to do with hygiene as Jewish doctors would now have us believe.
August 24th, 2012 | 2:33 pm
If a human male is better off without his foreskins, this raises an interesting question for those who believe in special creation or theistically guided “evolution.” Did God deliberately create the male body with a defective part so that, as a sign of a covenant with the God, Jewish men could cut that part off?
Catholics, of course, believe that female bodily perfection requires no modification whatsoever.
Am I correct in my recollection that the concept of bodily integrity was scoffed at in other threads?
August 24th, 2012 | 2:37 pm
G. Tremblé- It seems to me that a better analogy to a preventive mastectomy (removing breasts to avoid the chance of breast cancer) would be castration. Circumcision is not equivalent to that.
Jethrine- No one’s denying that circumcision is a religious practice (as opposed to a merely medical choice), but the question of its possible therapeutic benefits is certainly relevant to the public policy dimension (of whether it should be encouraged, discouraged, regulated, or banned). That’s why the pediatricians’ endorsement is news.
August 24th, 2012 | 2:38 pm
Of course it is about sexually transmitted diseases, HIV being the major one. It makes a lot of sense to force this on 100% of babies, so that the ones who grow up to be irresponsible enough to be in a position to catch HIV will face a reduced risk. It makes a lot of sense, to do this, to reduce the prevalence from .3% to .25% (accounting for the fact that there is a slight reduction, and for other means of transmission).
August 24th, 2012 | 2:43 pm
Anna: It seems to me that a better analogy to a preventive mastectomy (removing breasts to avoid the chance of breast cancer) would be castration. Circumcision is not equivalent to that.
It is analogous, as it is doing a wrong to 100% of people and denying them their freedom to choose, to prevent a much smaller percentage of problems. Indeed, in the case of HIV, preventing an infinitesimal number of infections, which are completely due to the irresponsibility of the person catching the disease.
August 24th, 2012 | 2:45 pm
” as Jewish doctors would now have us believe.”
Are you saying that all the doctors in the APA are Jewish? And that they want non-Jews to be subjected to their practice — why?
I don’t believe anyone would claim that the Jewish practice was done for health reasons.
They do counter the charge that the practice is unhealthy and harmful with claims that on the contrary circumcision has health benefits. And why not say so, if it is true?
August 24th, 2012 | 2:46 pm
From the same organization:
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. [yeah, giving legitimacy to the practice does this sort of thing]
http://www.nytimes.com/2010/05/07/health/policy/07cuts.html
Oh, what a worthy, learned group! They can’t be wrong!
August 24th, 2012 | 3:10 pm
Slats: Are you saying that all the doctors in the APA are Jewish? And that they want non-Jews to be subjected to their practice — why?
I think it’s pretty clear he means Jewish doctors who, in a philosophical manner, try to explain why the religion mandated this practice. The medieval Jewish philosopher Maimonides said that it’s to “weaken the organ by making it bleed”. Now, other reasons are being given. Think of the ridiculous explanation people have for why Judaism opposes pork – that it’s for health.
Slats: I don’t believe anyone would claim that the Jewish practice was done for health reasons.
Not when Jewish rabbis, in one way to their credit, did not mandate this practice for mothers when two of their sons had bled to death (due to hemophilia, we now know). “Oh, you’ve seen two of your sons bleed to death, because of this practice. Don’t worry, we won’t require to send your third son to his death.”
Slats: They do counter the charge that the practice is unhealthy and harmful with claims that on the contrary circumcision has health benefits. And why not say so, if it is true?
It’s weakened by making it bleed, one’s autonomy is violated, healthy tissue is cut off without one’s consent, but thankfully, if the person to whom it is forcibly done chooses to lead an irresponsible sex life, he will have a slightly lower chance of catching HIV. I’m envious.
August 24th, 2012 | 3:14 pm
Let’s remember that the American medical establishment would certainly say the benefits of using contraceptives outweigh the risks, and would almost certainly say the benefits of abortion outweigh the risks. So medical cost/benefit analyses don’t always settle questions.
In contraception, abortion, and circumcision, there are very significant issues that aren’t addressed by cost/benefit analyses.
August 24th, 2012 | 4:37 pm
The large majority of Christian parents in America have their boys circumcised. I think that indicates it is a practice that has widespread appeal beyond just one religion.
August 24th, 2012 | 4:47 pm
What other medical organizations say:
Canadian Paediatric Society
http://www.cps.ca/english/statements/fn/fn96-01.htm
“Recommendation: Circumcision of newborns should not be routinely performed.”
http://www.caringforkids.cps.ca/pregnancy&babies/circumcision.htm
“Circumcision is a ‘non-therapeutic’ procedure, which means it is not medically necessary.”
“After reviewing the scientific evidence for and against circumcision, the CPS does not recommend routine circumcision for newborn boys. Many paediatricians no longer perform circumcisions.”
Royal Australasian College of Physicians
http://www.racp.edu.au/index.cfm?objectid=65118B16-F145-8B74-236C86100E4E3E8E
“In the absence of evidence of risk of substantial harm, informed parental choice should be respected. Informed parental consent should include the possibility that the ethical principle of autonomy may be better fulfilled by deferring the circumcision to adolescence with the young man consenting on his own behalf.”
(almost all the men responsible for this statement will be circumcised themselves, as the male circumcision rate in Australia in 1950 was about 90%. “Routine” circumcision is now *banned* in public hospitals in Australia.)
British Medical Association
http://bma.org.uk/-/media/Files/PDFs/Practical%20advice%20at%20work/Ethics/Circumcision.pdf
“to circumcise for therapeutic reasons where medical research has shown other techniques to be at least as effective and less invasive would be unethical and inappropriate.”
The Royal Dutch Medical Association
http://knmg.artsennet.nl/Diensten/knmgpublicaties/KNMGpublicatie/Nontherapeutic-circumcision-of-male-minors-2010.htm
“The official viewpoint of KNMG and other related medical/scientific organisations is that non-therapeutic circumcision of male minors is a violation of children’s rights to autonomy and physical integrity. Contrary to popular belief, circumcision can cause complications – bleeding, infection, urethral stricture and panic attacks are particularly common. KNMG is therefore urging a strong policy of deterrence. KNMG is calling upon doctors to actively and insistently inform parents who are considering the procedure of the absence of medical benefits and the danger of complications.”
August 24th, 2012 | 4:49 pm
Why would this raise any more questions than the routine removal of appendices or tonsils? Or the existence of disease all together? Or the washing of food or sterilizing water? Most Christians (and in likelihood Jews and Muslims as well) believe humans were damaged in some way by the corruption of the world through sin.
August 24th, 2012 | 4:58 pm
Jack – Or how about wisdom teeth and those tough toe nails? Gosh they can be a pain.
August 24th, 2012 | 5:15 pm
Most Christians (and in likelihood Jews and Muslims as well) believe humans were damaged in some way by the corruption of the world through sin.
Jack,
Would anyone really claim that men have foreskins because of the Fall? And God did not command anyone to remove appendixes or tonsils. It just seems quite an odd notion to me that God would design a body part for men to cut off in a religious ritual, a body part that men are allegedly better off without.
Also, remember I said it would be a problem for those who believe in special creation and theistically guided “evolution.”
August 24th, 2012 | 6:15 pm
Jack,
It shouldn’t. Notice that this is a traditional practice for Muslims as well, but all of the negative religious commentary is aimed at Jews.
Not that the AAP has done this, it wouldn’t surprise me if at least some of the other countries referenced above don’t follow suit.
But at the end of the day, what started all of this discussion wasn’t the forcing of anyone to circumcise. It was a nation (Germany) with an awful, very recent of history of the worst kind of anti-Semitism imaginable taking steps to forbid Jewish (and Muslim) families from circumcising boys. To twist the discussion in any other direction is, to say the least, questionable.
Commenters who apparently have no problem with vaccination (which, by the way, violates bodily integrity and can very occasionally have horrible results) and abortion (!?!) to have such an issue with circumcision while completely sidestepping the issue referenced above and making straw man style arguments regarding religious liberty (circumcision somehow being comparable to denying medical treatment to a child resulting in that’s child death) strikes me as dubious at best.
August 24th, 2012 | 6:18 pm
Jack: Why would this raise any more questions than the routine removal of appendices or tonsils?
Why indeed, other than actual medical need.
I would have died, had my appendix not been removed. On the other hand, many have bled to death, others have had their genitalia horribly mutilated (like the Canadian suicide, who was raised as a girl), because of this practice that should raise no more questions than the procedure that saved my life, according to you.
Jack: Or the existence of disease all together?
You’re seriously comparing a perfectly healthy part of a man’s body to a disease? Wow.
Jack: Or the washing of food or sterilizing water?
Yes, sterilizing water is exactly like putting a knife to a baby boy’s privates!
Jack: Most Christians (and in likelihood Jews and Muslims as well) believe humans were damaged in some way by the corruption of the world through sin.
Does this mean that Adam had no foreskin, and that one of God’s curses was to give him one?
August 24th, 2012 | 6:21 pm
Mark Lydon: What other medical organizations say: What other medical organizations say:
Why now, don’t start citing “other medical organizations” – not if they disagree with me. I prefer the American Academy of Pediatrics, which does not trouble my mind with ideas of “ethics”, or “rights of children”, “autonomy”, and other nonsense – just see this link: http://www.nytimes.com/2010/05/07/health/policy/07cuts.html
August 24th, 2012 | 7:01 pm
Shouldn’t they also recommend removing one testicle as well? This would reduce testicular cancer rates by 50%.
August 24th, 2012 | 7:15 pm
They brand men like a herd of cows. American men are such wimps to let their sons be subjected to this absurd surgery. If it were women tied down & cut, the Feminists would be howling all over the world. The male genitals are a cheap commodity. There is no argument too absurd for the circumcisers. They insult the appearance of the intact penis, claim that circumcision heals everything from body warts to HIV, and draw an illogical distinction between female & male genitals. Circumcision is a barbarian practice, supported by nothing but anti-male arguments. Circumcision is the mark of a slave, my friends.
August 24th, 2012 | 7:54 pm
“Did God deliberately create the male body with a defective part so that, as a sign of a covenant with the God, Jewish men could cut that part off?”
Interesting question. We know he removed a rib from man so that man would cling to his wife. Perhaps removal of the foreskin was so man would cling to the nation of Israel.
August 24th, 2012 | 8:26 pm
Your headline is wrong. They do not “endorse” it. They say the benefits outweigh the risks (they exaggerate the benefits and minimize the risks*) but still do not say all male babies should be circumcised, but as they always have, leave it up to parents.
*For example, since there are no statistical studies of major complications and deaths, only case reports, they simply ignore them.
Anna William: neonatal hemicastration would reduce testicular cancer by 50% without seriously affecting fertility, but we don’t do it.
August 25th, 2012 | 8:20 am
Steve: It was a nation (Germany) with an awful, very recent of history
I am glad to see that you learned the lesson of this “awful, very recent history” – that one should not ethnically stereotype people, and hold them responsible for the deeds of people they don’t even know, misdeeds that were committed before they (unless they are seniors) were even born.
Is it not shameful to cite an example of ethnic stereotyping to justify ethnic stereotyping? Steve, if I held you accountable for all the misdeeds committed by Americans and Christians with whom you had nothing to do, Christmas would arrive before I’d be done. We have decided that people are only responsible for their own actions, not for those who died before they were born. Is that wrong?
Steve: taking steps to forbid Jewish (and Muslim) families from circumcising boys
Is this an unimaginable horror? Is this a great wrong done to these boys, that now they will be able to choose for themselves, as opposed to having healthy tissue cut off from their body at the whims of their parents?
Steve: Commenters who apparently have no problem with vaccination (which, by the way, violates bodily integrity and can very occasionally have horrible results)
Right. A gentle needle that has enormous benefits (to a huge number of people, not to a tiny number, to responsible people, not just to irresponsible people) is a violation of bodily integrity, while cutting off healthy tissue without any medical need does not. This comparison belongs in the same dustbin the comparison between this practice (which has led people to bleed to death, and be mutilated enough to be raised as girls) and appendicitis (which saved my life).
Steve: and making straw man style arguments regarding religious liberty
It is not a strawman. This was the position of “religious liberty” advocates in the very recent past, and is of some to this very day. In 1974, Congress mandated that all state exempt from homicide laws parents who for religious reasons refuse to seek treatment for their children’s eminently treatable diseases, which leads to the death of the children. There is one faction that holds that parents have the right to make martyrs out of their children, and one faction that does not.
August 25th, 2012 | 8:23 am
Charles: Interesting question. We know he removed a rib from man so that man would cling to his wife. Perhaps removal of the foreskin was so man would cling to the nation of Israel.
Not sure if this is a parody (if it is, it’s a good one), but if it isn’t, men don’t have one fewer rib than women.
August 25th, 2012 | 11:13 pm
For what regards gods ans divinities, I definitively don’t trust those who command under the belt.
This is why parents, not doctors, should be entrusted to make decisions about a child’s welfare.
Doctors have made many harmful decrees about what is and is not “healthy” and “safe”. The false god “Science” is not a reliable guide even when it comes to factual questions like whether yogurt reduces disease, let alone values-driven and subjective issues such as when or whether we ought to stop circumcising males, when in reality both the arguments for and the arguments against are based on articles of faith, taken on faith – not scientific fact.
August 27th, 2012 | 9:45 am
Blake: This is why parents, not doctors, should be entrusted to make decisions about a child’s welfare.
Later on, you say that you don’t trust the findings of science, regarding the harmfulness of certain practices. Does this mean that despite the harms, parents should make decisions regarding FGM, too?
Should Jehovah’s Witness parents have the religious freedom to deny their children life-saving blood transfusions? Should Christian Scientist parents have the religious freedom to deny their children all life-saving medicine and treatment? If they are to be entrusted to make any decision about a child’s welfare whatsoever, why not?
Blake: Doctors have made many harmful decrees about what is and is not “healthy” and “safe”.
This is true, but no reason to attack science in its entirety. It merely obliges us to think rationally about the decrees of doctors.
Blake: The false god “Science” is not a reliable guide even when it comes to factual questions like whether yogurt reduces disease
Given enough funding, it would. But that question would not be prioritized, as there are so many other things that are more important. You and I live a comfortable life and are able to attack the “false god of science”, because of the advances made by science. You’re right that it is a false god, it actually does people some good.
August 27th, 2012 | 10:22 am
Thanks for all the quotes from other Pediatric organizations. Clearly none has a strong negative opinion, most not even a weak one. So outlawing circumcision has little support from the medical world. So why outlaw? Apparently, some belief systems require it. I have trouble with a belief system that requires that I be a part of it. I prefer to choose my own beliefs.
August 27th, 2012 | 10:50 am
The reasons for circumcision are part of a religious mystery, I suspect. By “mystery” I mean only something the meaning and purpose of which is to be kept secret and may be long forgotten, not something that is deliberately incomprehensible or enigmatic. Therefore I would look to Cabala for its explanation.
Circumcision on the eighth day after birth COULD have something to do with the eight days that, in Caballistic lore, are required before the soul is firmly set in the body of a newborn. The Hebrew for circumcision is bris, which literally means “something sealed,” I believe, and hence bris is usually translated as a “pact” or “covenant” in analogy to the sealing of solemn agreements with wax that were used in place of signatures in antiquity and before. The blood shed during the rite may mimic red wax.
It’s a fanciful explanation, and it skirts too closely to understanding circumcision as having only a SYMBOLIC purpose. I myself, contrary to many, do not believe that religious observances such as circumcision had, at the time of their origination at any rate, any symbolical purposes whatsoever. A heightened interest in Symbolism is, I suspect, an acquired taste and is, wherever it is encountered in religion and philosophy, the product of some literary or literary-friendly tradition or other; which is to say, symbol formation is too self-conscious and philosophical to have much to do with practices such as circumcision that very likely are pre-historic in origin.
Moreover the use of symbols is always a sign of insipidity and banality in a religion. It is the telltale mark of a faith that has happily traded spirit for intellect. The best example is the Unitarian Church whose entire theology consists in little more than symbol-mongering and for which all so-called religious texts are little more than complicated glossaries of this, that, or the other symbol. A university professor of laodicean tendencies is content, even pleased, with the corpse of a religion that flatters the intellect, which is why Unitarianism in America today, its origins in puritan Congregationalism notwithstanding, is almost predominantly a phenomenon of upper-class university communities from Berkeley to Madison to Cambridge. A cross that has been tamed, that is no more than pallid symbol of a distant unpleasantness such as the Crucifixion, one wiped quite clean of blood and guts, is congenial in those neighborhoods. But I am digressing.
Understood as “mystical PRACTICE,” however, circumcision would necessarily have had primarily a PRACTICAL spiritual purpose, the symbolism of the act being quite absent from and even irrelevant to the intentions of the participants, something that has been supplied only much later and after the core Caballistic purpose, which I am suggesting might have been to SEAL the soul into the body, had been long forgotten. Who knows, maybe there was a belief tat the soul could escape via the penis! And maybe it can!!!
Cabala is intentionally secretive, let us not forget, and the last men who understood its practical purpose, however farfetched that purpose might seem to us today, may have been moldering in their graves for millennia.
August 27th, 2012 | 11:25 am
Mike Melendez: Clearly none has a strong negative opinion
I can only guess at how you would read “unethical and inappropriate” and
“violation of children’s rights to autonomy and physical integrity”.
Mike Melendez: I have trouble with a belief system that requires that I be a part of it. I prefer to choose my own beliefs.
You don’t even see the irony, do you, in making this statement in advocating forcibly cutting off healthy tissue from the bodies of babies? No one is telling you not to cut off whatever part of your body you don’t like, I just have trouble with a belief system that requires the mutilation of the bodies of infants. I prefer that people be able to choose for themselves.
August 27th, 2012 | 11:49 am
“If a human male is better off without his foreskins, this raises an interesting question for those who believe in special creation or theistically guided “evolution.” Did God deliberately create the male body with a defective part so that, as a sign of a covenant with the God, Jewish men could cut that part off?”
Why did God not create the Temple at Jerusalem whole(and add on a force-field to protect it from invaders by the way), instead of creating stone?
God created humans with the ability to alter the universe, including their own bodies, and to do so in his service. To make everything for humans would be to ask the same service of them that humans ask of cattle. Which is proper to cattle but not to man.
A better question then your’s would be, why would God make man with a brain and not give him ways to use it. The mind is surely a more important organ then the foreskin. It is even a more important sexual organ.
August 27th, 2012 | 12:29 pm
Too pull another quote “informed parental choice should be respected”. For the one I suspect you pulled from, there is the qualifier “for therapeutic reasons”. The Dutch are the only standouts, which is odd for a country where physicians include administering death as part of their repertoire. Most pediatricians recognize that they are medical professionals. They need to be ethical but, at least at the professional level, they recognize that ethics development is not their field, let alone politics.
I guess Maximilian you have your own dogmas. I was offering no irony. I am sincere in believing the best fruit of the Enlightenment was religious liberty. I do comment on blindness when I see it. It a problem all of us humans have from time to time.
As to my beliefs, I am more towards to a community, especially family, view of humanity than to radical autonomy down to newborns. I find the American Academy of Pediatrics as eminently sensible of the power of culture in their suggestions regarding female “circumcision”. Change comes slowly and must be encouraged not dictated. Americans who did the latter used to be called Ugly.
August 27th, 2012 | 2:49 pm
Jason Taylor: A better question then your’s would be, why would God make man with a brain and not give him ways to use it. The mind is surely a more important organ then the foreskin. It is even a more important sexual organ.
If there were a way to damage the brain without killing the subject available to primitive peoples, I can assure you that some religions would have mandated it. And people would be called names for opposing the practice.
August 27th, 2012 | 2:50 pm
Mike Melendez: Too pull another quote “informed parental choice should be respected”.
Parental choice to deny infants a choice must be respected. The freedom to deny babies freedom must be respected. Didn’t you complain that opponents of infant genital cutting were forcing their views on others – in opposing their ‘right’ to force their views on their children?
Mike Melendez: For the one I suspect you pulled from, there is the qualifier “for therapeutic reasons”.
If it is unethical to do this for therapeutic reasons (which supposedly benefit the child), what reasons would justify it?
Mike Melendez: They need to be ethical but, at least at the professional level, they recognize that ethics development is not their field
The American Academy of Pediatrics, with its complete abandonment of morality and ethics, in favor of political correctness and cultural relativism has made that abundantly clear. As for the others, that will explain your complaint that there are no stronger condemnation – I think they would view it as political.
Mike Melendez: I am sincere in believing the best fruit of the Enlightenment was religious liberty.
Where is the religious liberty for defenseless infants, who do not consent to their bodies being the playthings of their parents and their imams and rabbis – to cut and mutilate as they wish and please?
Mike Melendez: I find the American Academy of Pediatrics as eminently sensible of the power of culture in their suggestions regarding female “circumcision”. Change comes slowly and must be encouraged not dictated. Americans who did the latter used to be called Ugly.
I’ll give you one thing, Mike, you are completely consistent, like the AAP, and unlike many others. I have often wondered how people can attack genital mutilation for girls, and support the same thing for boys. Is it not madness to take a knife and gore the genitalia of defenseless children, to mutilate their sacrosanct bodies, to put them at risk for death and lifelong disfigurement, to deny them their autonomy and dignity? Again, you are consistent. You take your beliefs to their logical conclusion, and you do not make exceptions to make them more palatable.
Is it ‘ugly’ to demand that people who leave the third world, respect the laws of the land, and that they leave their barbaric practices at home. No, what is ugly, is washing one’s hands, like Pilate, and condemning defenseless young children to their sour cross. Your comment reeks of cultural relativism.
But tell me, do you also favor Jehovah’s Witnesses letting their children die, rather than giving them a blood transfusion? What about Christian Science, would you favor giving followers the right to deny their children life-saving medicine altogether? Not trying to be offensive, I just want to see where the limits are, for you.
August 27th, 2012 | 6:42 pm
I am not so cynical as to believe the American Academy of Pediatrics took this into consideration, but of course their revised position, particularly in calling for insurance to cover circumcision, is to the economic advantage of pediatricians (or obstetricians, or whoever performs the circumcision). I have a feeling if it were the “good guys” here who were arguing against circumcision, and the “bad guys” arguing for it, the “good guys” would have observed that the American Academy of Pediatrics might just be lining their own pockets by this switch in policy. Doctors under discussion, particularly those who prescribe contraceptives or perform abortions or remove homosexuality from the DSM, are generally distrusted here.
August 28th, 2012 | 10:17 am
An observation from somebody in the medical field:
What David Nickol notes about the AAP having a financial incentive to rec’d circumcision is key to understanding this recommendation. It is not at all cynical to recognize that whenever a medical group makes a specific recommendation, their financial incentives need to be taken into account. So, for instance, the American Urological Association’s rec’s about prostate cancer screening should be rather less trusted than those of the United States Preventive Services Task Force. We should not trust everything the cardiologists say about the need for routine screening with EKGs. Planned Parenthood’s claims about contraception and abortion should be scrutinized with a jaundiced eye.
The fact that financial incentives will, consciously or subconsciously, shape the recommendations of individual physicians or professional groups is why it is now common practice for doctors to disclose any sponsorships before giving academic medical lectures.
August 29th, 2012 | 10:29 am
First, as to the money to made by the providers of abortion (Planned Parenthood, its associated physicians, nurses, etc.) versus the money to be made by their counterparts who provide circumcision, in determining motivation, surely the percentage of income derived, respectively, by the two groups will be a significant factor.
Second, the relative gravity of the procedures must be considered. The term “abortion mill” is NOT an exaggeration for many of the so-called “clinics” that earn money dismembering fetuses or scraping away at fetuses or sticking sharpened knives into fetuses or who-knows-what other ghastly and novel procedures that adequate for killing a human being quite dead they’ve come up with.
The clinical and ethical questions of abortion are, well, “difficult,” as even a brain-dead clown like Sen. Barbara Boxer seems to have noticed; they are even “heart-wrenching” and “traumatic” and, oh yes, “deeply personal,” so it is surprising, to say no more, to learn that all that Sturm und Drang can all be sorted out given a free afternoon and a Visa card.
The picture of a woman and her Solon-like physician pondering the seriousness of the decision they are about to make, which the abortion rhetoric paints as a diversion, is ludicrous, more often than not bearing NO RESEMBLANCE WHATSOEVER to the factory-like slice-and-dice assembly lines one actually encounters, especially in urban settings where 90% of the killing takes place. Depend on it, in such hellish settings, wages are of the utmost importance in motivating all concerned, mother and child excepted, that is, and sometimes not even the sort of mother who’s on her third or fourth go around and looking to economize. As a business matter it’s a case of “Volume! Volume! Volume!” and “By Midnite All Babies Must go!”
The ethical and health concerns of circumcision, on the other hand, for all the faux handwringing about harm to the “sacrosanct” child, who presumably becomes so at birth, are as nothing compared to the guaranteed harm that abortion provides, which is, after all, its NUMBER ONE selling point. Has anyone ever heard the term “circumcision mill”? I know I haven’t.
August 29th, 2012 | 12:12 pm
Joe: The term “abortion mill” is NOT an exaggeration for many of the so-called “clinics”
Sure, 3% of the services of Planned Parenthood being abortion makes it an abortion mill.
Joe: harm to the “sacrosanct” child, who presumably becomes so at birth,
That would be as ridiculous as arguing that a fertilized egg or a frozen embryo is a child. What difference does the location of a child make? A child three weeks before birth can survive perfectly well on its own. To eliminate it for convenience is nothing less than murdering innocence.
Joe: are as nothing compared to the guaranteed harm that abortion provides
Are you interested in scoring imaginary points on abortion (favorite topic of some), or in doing what is right? If you are pro-life, do you care at all about the babies who bleed to death due to no fault of their own? Or do you say: what’s the use of saving the lives of 113 babies a year, when abortion remains legal?
August 29th, 2012 | 2:27 pm
The figure of 3% is highly misleading. The 3% means 3% of the “activities of Planned Parenthood (PP) according to PP itself. But the discussion I thought I was joining, rather latterly too was (a) to what extent did money play a role in the decision of the APA to endorse circumcision as it relates to (b) to what extent does money play a role in the motivations of abortion providers.
Three percent of “activities” does not address that question at all and, I suspect, is a deliberate red herring designed to confuse the easily confused, which seems to have worked, congratulations to PP and its propagandists.
I did locate the following figures for 2009 PP INCOME, which is rather more pertinent: Income from abortion services $165 million, earned from 332,000 assaults on unborn human beings per day. On a budget of roughly $1.1 billion/year, that works out to 16.4%. So you may take your 3% red herring and wrap it with the New York Times: $165 million/year is a truly interesting sum of money. At more than 16% of budget, moreover, it can hardly fail to be a serious incentive. In 2010, PP performed 329,000 abortions. I do not have figures on its abortion income for that year, but it probably is roughly the same as the year before’s since there is less than a 1% difference in the number of abortions performed from one year to the next. Not coincidentally, PP placing fewer than 5000 infants for adoption in 2009 and only 850 in 2010. Why so drastic a drop when it comes to keeping babies alive, I have to wonder.
Finally, 330,000 abortions per year. excluding Sundays and Federal holidays, works out to about 1100 deaths a day. That sounds like industrial-level killing to me; but, simply for purposes of comparison, between Feb. 1940 and Feb. 1945, the Nazis are estimated to have exterminated about 6-million Jews or about 3300 per day. So PP, with 800 clinics and a staff of 26,000, assuming that roughly 3% or 800 work in abortion services, manages to reach one third the yearly output of Adolph Eichmann and friends. The numbers employed by Eichmann in this business is hard to come by. The SS is known to have run about 1500 concentration camps, and although killing occurred at all of them, only about a half dozen were true Vernichtungslage: death camps. Figures are difficult to come by but it seems that at least 10,000 or so members of the so-called SiPo (Sicherheitspolizei) were actively engaged in rounding up Jews and Gipsies and so forth. So as measured simply by deaths per employee the PP figure of one-and-three-eighths dead fetuses per employee per day stands up rather impressively to the measly one-third of a Jew per Nazi per day that the SiPo managed to send to his reward. Atta boy— Excuse me—Atta girl, PP! That’s the spirit.
August 29th, 2012 | 2:33 pm
PS: The notion that circumcising MDs and nurses derive 16% and more of their annual income from the procedure is ridiculous.
August 29th, 2012 | 6:56 pm
Joe: I did locate the following figures for 2009 PP INCOME, which is rather more pertinent: Income from abortion services $165 million, earned from 332,000 assaults on unborn human beings per day. On a budget of roughly $1.1 billion/year, that works out to 16.4%. So you may take your 3% red herring and wrap it with the New York Times
Even if we go by your measure, 16.4% still isn’t particularly impressive. It certainly doesn’t come close to Senator Jon Kyl’s assertion that “more than 90%” of what Planned Parenthood does is abortion – but a spokesperson later said that it was not intended to be a factual statement. And it certainly does not justify you calling Planned Parenthood an abortion mill – and there wouldn’t be anything wrong with that, either.
Joe: Not coincidentally, PP placing fewer than 5000 infants for adoption in 2009 and only 850 in 2010. Why so drastic a drop when it comes to keeping babies alive, I have to wonder.
Probably because it is not PP’s… choice. What are they supposed to do? Force young ladies to bear a fetus to term and give it up for adoption?
Joe: the Nazis are estimated to have exterminated about 6-million Jews or about 3300 per day.
Are you really comparing the elimination of non-viable embryos and fetuses to the murder of living, breathing Jews? If you do, you can count non-PP abortions and you’d arrive at a number of abortion greater than the number of killings carried out by Nazi Germany, on a yearly basis.
You also didn’t answer my question. If you are pro-life, can you not show at least some concern for the babies who bleed to death as a result of this completely unnecessary and disgusting practice?
August 29th, 2012 | 10:12 pm
“Are you really comparing the elimination of non-viable embryos and fetuses to the murder of living, breathing Jews?”
Yes.
“Can you not show at least some concern for the babies who bleed to death as a result of this completely unnecessary and disgusting practice?”
What ARE you talking about? I wasn’t aware that I was defending circumcision. I was responding to some insipid remark up-thread to the effect that, if one objection to abortion raised in the past “on these boards” is the potential the profit motive holds to kill more to make more, then of course, for shame, a similar objection to circumcision must be allowed.
I then attempted an estimate of the monies involved in abortion mills and decided that the tu quoque proffered was absurd, as absurd your trying to construct—what?—a moral equivalence between the very, very, rare chance of dying from circumcision with the very, very, very rare chance of surviving an abortion. It’s simply not a comparison that can be taken seriously.
I also tend to doubt that Planned Parenthood shares your assessment of just how “impressive” $165 million is. I think that 1100 abortions a day, 330,000 a year, year in and year out is the nonpareil of an abortion mill. I further think that you would have to have the sensibility of a slab of ocean-bottom basalt to believe otherwise, as in “there wouldn’t be ANYTHING wrong with that, either [emphasis supplied].” But hey, that’s only my opinion.
And why are you dragging poor Sen. Kyle into this? Have I forgotten something? Did I mention him?
I’ve learned my lesson with you though, Max. It’s mostly a waste of time fencing with you, so I’m going to call it a night.
August 30th, 2012 | 5:39 pm
Joe: Yes.
Then that is an insult to every victim, survivor of the Holocaust – and every humanitarian in the world. An embryo is in no way comparable to a living, breathing Jew.
Joe: What ARE you talking about? I wasn’t aware that I was defending circumcision.
I didn’t say you were. But neither did you show concern for the babies killed by this practice.
Joe: I then attempted an estimate of the monies involved in abortion mills
Honestly, do you really think that if 3% of your services and 16.4% of your income are related to abortion, that makes you an “abortion mill”?
Joe: a moral equivalence between the very, very, rare chance of dying from circumcision with the very, very, very rare chance of surviving an abortion.
An unnecessary body count of more than 100 is not “very, very, very rare”. In the very case a woman dies of an abortion, the case is touted by the anti-abortion until my ears wear out.
Joe: I further think that you would have to have the sensibility of a slab of ocean-bottom basalt to believe otherwise, as in “there wouldn’t be ANYTHING wrong with that, either [emphasis supplied].”
You’re entitled to your opinion, but lowering the number of unwanted children is a good thing in my book. It lowers the chance of the mistreatment of actual persons, as opposed to embryos.
Joe: I also tend to doubt that Planned Parenthood shares your assessment of just how “impressive” $165 million is.
Well, you thankfully calculated the percentage of total income that this constitutes – 16.4%. It’s not negligible, but it’s not particularly impressive either. It shows that Planned Parenthood provides a wide array of services, one of which is abortion.
Joe: And why are you dragging poor Sen. Kyle into this? Have I forgotten something? Did I mention him?
No, but it was still fun to mention him – and his “not intended to be a factual statement”.
August 31st, 2012 | 11:36 am
“Then that is an insult to every victim, survivor of the Holocaust – and every humanitarian in the world. An embryo is in no way comparable to a living, breathing Jew.”
This is a perfect example of a near-peerless ability to beg the question. The status of the human being that you call an “embryo” IS the very heart of the question that you step right over on your way to asserting the difference of embryo and adult, as if simply by scribbling a three-syllable term of art you could materially alter the biological reality of a human being with, not just a COMPLETE complement of DNA, but a COMPLETELY UNIQUE complement of HUMAN DNA.
As far as their humanity is concerned, the ONLY difference that I can see between am embryo and “living, breathing Jew” is their age. In fact, your statement is so lacking in self-reflection as to be self-refuting. The differences in development between the embryo and an adult are admittedly vast, but whatever they are, those difference do NOT include “living” or “breathing.” As with the Jew, so with the embryo.
An embryo IS tiny. Who would deny it? And I also admit that many people exhibit the sort of brutish sensibility that is impressed by size. They tend to be fans of Wrestle-Mania and Monster Car rodeos; but I suggest that we are better off not looking to fans of “The Biggest Loser” for appropriate standards of appraisal. Still, as a concession to brutality, if size matters so much, you list all the ways the adult and the fetus are different—go ahead, use a BIG pencil—while I shall list all the ways they are they same. I guarantee you ahead of time that my list will be far longer, as in far BIGGER.
You HAVE at times made mention of another difference that strikes you as particularly relevant, so I will address it in more detail. I’m speaking of the protean term “viability.” Now, strictly as a matter of the respecting the correct meaning in words, which I have had reason to note is not consistently a priority of yours, “viability” denotes only “able to live.” An embryo or a fetus is perfectly “able to live” in his mother’s womb. So I really have to ask, why isn’t it good enough that he does just fine in there? In fact he may never do as fine, affairs may never be as satisfactory nor he as contented in being alive as he was in utero were he to live to a hundred. That he will die outside the womb, by which you place such store, appears to me to be as unremarkable as that a bird will die when placed underwater or a fish when taken into the air. When such things happen SOMETHING IS TERRIBLY WRONG; so it is as half-witted to discount the humanity of a fetus because it is so weak, infirm, and improvident as to die after someone rips it from its proper place as it would be for someone to (1) lock YOU in a freezer, (2) pull YOU out a day later, and (3) scoff at YOU for being hopelessly nonviable at ten below.
In wrestling your sense of affrontery into some semblance of control, you might keep in mind that Margaret Sanger, the founder of Planned Parenthood (PP) was an enthusiastic eugenicist. As she once said, eugenics could “assist the race in eliminating the unfit.” Ponder well that word, “eliminating.” That same unwholesome goal was of course the absolute heart of Nazi-ism, it should need NO pointing out, without which Nazi-ism would not be Nazi-ism. To her credit, Sanger was opposed to abortion; but forced sterilization was okay with her; and she took a VERY dim view of certain races and classes of people. Appropriate comparisons to Nazis is unavoidable as a historical matter as well. Eugenicists here and those in Europe read the same books and were influenced by the same authors. (Consult “A History of Birth Control,” by Peter Engleman, 2011.)
Yet more needs saying. I do not know that PP, founded in 1921, I believe, with eugenics as an explicit part of its manifesto, has ever formally disavowed it or its goals. Planned Parenthood advocates simply ceased mentioning the subject after some indefinite period of time. Sanger herself died in 1966 without having retracted her support for eugenics. So, I must ask, in exactly what frame of mind might the members of PP have greeted the decision in Roe in 1973? That Roe MAY be used to advance a eugenicist program cannot be doubted; and it certainly advances the goal of planned parenthood. It is, therefore, NOT at all “insulting” to espy a connection to what was, after all, the eschaton of Adolf Hitler. Further because PP, unlike its founder who gave as one reason for opposing abortion her conviction that life began at conception, her successors, for reasons similar to yours—and worse!—show no patience with footling scruples such as “is a fetus alive?” or “is a fetus human?” and like pointless chit-chat. No, sir. Their message to women has always been “You wanna de knife, you gedda de knife!” Interview over, and further questions disallowed.
So yes, when you kill 330,000 “living, breathing” human beings a year, for decade after decade, at a pace to rival the best efforts Nazis, I should think you’d be thankful if the epithets hurled your way stop with “running an abortion mill.”
Finally if “personhood” is all that’s stopping you from condemning the killing of fetuses, well, now that is easily settled. Personhood, unless you want to get all metaphysical and religious about it, which I’m quite sure you don’t, is a legal concept as well as a psychological one. If a legislature can make a corporation a person for purposes of taxing it, they can just as well make fetuses into persons for the purpose of not killing them. The related psychological concept of “personality” always singles out as important some uniqueness in a given human being. The frequency distribution of his DNA—on the order of one in a trillion—would seem to qualify a fetus as plenty unique.
September 1st, 2012 | 3:03 pm
Joe: This is a perfect example of a near-peerless ability to beg the question
Since I pointed out that you begged the question by assuming that any revelation is an actual revelation, you’ve been using that argument (incorrectly) non stop.
Joe: not just a COMPLETE complement of DNA, but a COMPLETELY UNIQUE complement of HUMAN DNA.
Monozygotic twins will be disturbed to know that they are not actual human beings, because their DNA is not unique. Moreover, sufferers from certain terminal diseases will be disturbed to know that what haunts them is a human person – because of its unique DNA.
Joe: The differences in development between the embryo and an adult are admittedly vast, but whatever they are, those difference do NOT include “living” or “breathing.” As with the Jew, so with the embryo.
Embryos don’t breathe. They get their oxygen from the mother. And they certainly don’t live. You can’t freeze living tissue for a few hundred years, take it out, unfreeze it and have it live again – sorry Walt.
Joe: Still, as a concession to brutality, if size matters so much, you list all the ways the adult and the fetus are different—go ahead, use a BIG pencil—while I shall list all the ways they are they same. I guarantee you ahead of time that my list will be far longer, as in far BIGGER.
Perhaps, and we share 60% of our genome with a banana – that does not make a banana human. The point is that the embryo lacks defining characteristics of a human and a person. Viability, for example.
Joe: An embryo or a fetus is perfectly “able to live” in his mother’s womb. So I really have to ask, why isn’t it good enough that he does just fine in there? In fact he may never do as fine, affairs may never be as satisfactory nor he as contented in being alive as he was in utero were he to live to a hundred. That he will die outside the womb, by which you place such store, appears to me to be as unremarkable as that a bird will die when placed underwater or a fish when taken into the air.
Well, you proclaim that embryos are actual persons. Why compare them with fish, when you can compare them to actual persons? Of course, actual persons can survive outside of the womb, which would negate your argument.
Joe: When such things happen SOMETHING IS TERRIBLY WRONG; so it is as half-witted to discount the humanity of a fetus because it is so weak, infirm, and improvident as to die after someone rips it from its proper place as it would be for someone to (1) lock YOU in a freezer, (2) pull YOU out a day later, and (3) scoff at YOU for being hopelessly nonviable at ten below.
I’m glad you brought that up. I wouldn’t be able to survive that, nor would you. Why? We are persons. An embryo would survive that.
Joe: In wrestling your sense of affrontery into some semblance of control, you might keep in mind that Margaret Sanger, the founder of Planned Parenthood (PP) was an enthusiastic eugenicist. As she once said, eugenics could “assist the race in eliminating the unfit.” Ponder well that word, “eliminating.” That same unwholesome goal was of course the absolute heart of Nazi-ism,
Elimination can mean any number of things. Do you have any evidence that by that, Margaret Sanger meant actual extermination?
Joe: To her credit, Sanger was opposed to abortion
So did the actual Nazis, to their credit.
Joe: So yes, when you kill 330,000 “living, breathing” human beings a year, for decade after decade, at a pace to rival the best efforts Nazis, I should think you’d be thankful if the epithets hurled your way stop with “running an abortion mill.”
And yet it constitutes 3-16% of their activities. If they are an abortion mill, then they are a contraception mill, and a breast exam mill.
Joe: Personhood, unless you want to get all metaphysical and religious about it, which I’m quite sure you don’t, is a legal concept as well as a psychological one.
Ridiculous. It’s a moral concept. If it were only a legal concept, the legislature could decree that you are not a person. If it were a religious concept, then all would be persons, save for Amalekites.
September 2nd, 2012 | 1:26 am
tinyurl.com/aapanno
The policy annotated (a work in progress)
Links
Blogs
Find Us
Contact