No, you only have a short window to make it a nothing surgery vs. a week+ recovery time.
A baby will always be at their parents’ mercy. And if a parent feels the medical benefits outweigh the risks, they get to make that choice.
Also, I don’t get why people keep bringing up Kellog and his ilk. It’s irrelevant. WHO and the CDC both cite benefits. That’s relevant enough for a person today without pretending the reasoning has to be based on old information.
Yes, I’m aware it’s a week of recovery time later. I made the decision not to circumcise my son after talking to my father who had the procedure in his teens after he developed a condition. He told me exactly what it was like. (My father is 88 and was born before circumcision was common.)
You can do almost anything to an infant and they won’t remember the trauma. Infants have been subjected to near-fatal child abuse, including having their femurs broken, and they don’t remember it. That doesn’t make it right.
Having your wisdom teeth removed takes at least a week of recovery and we do that in late teens or early twenties. There are lots of things that take a week to recover from, and having to have your foreskin removed because it’s causing issues is far, far more rare. That’s not a reason to take that choice away.
Like I said, they can always have that procedure later if they want to, but once it’s done, that choice is basically gone.
Also like I said, I’m not trying to make people feel bad for having done it when we didn’t really know better. I’m not shaming anyone. It’s just what we did until recently. Going forward, though, it’s not justified and we shouldn’t be advocating for it now that we know better.
eta: and Kellogg isn’t irrelevant. That’s exactly why the practice has been embedded in American culture, so when we’re talking about why we do it, he’s extremely relevant.
No, you only have a short window to make it a nothing surgery vs. a week+ recovery time.
A baby will always be at their parents’ mercy. And if a parent feels the medical benefits outweigh the risks, they get to make that choice.
Also, I don’t get why people keep bringing up Kellog and his ilk. It’s irrelevant. WHO and the CDC both cite benefits. That’s relevant enough for a person today without pretending the reasoning has to be based on old information.
Again, cite sources?
Yes, I’m aware it’s a week of recovery time later. I made the decision not to circumcise my son after talking to my father who had the procedure in his teens after he developed a condition. He told me exactly what it was like. (My father is 88 and was born before circumcision was common.)
You can do almost anything to an infant and they won’t remember the trauma. Infants have been subjected to near-fatal child abuse, including having their femurs broken, and they don’t remember it. That doesn’t make it right.
Having your wisdom teeth removed takes at least a week of recovery and we do that in late teens or early twenties. There are lots of things that take a week to recover from, and having to have your foreskin removed because it’s causing issues is far, far more rare. That’s not a reason to take that choice away.
Like I said, they can always have that procedure later if they want to, but once it’s done, that choice is basically gone.
Also like I said, I’m not trying to make people feel bad for having done it when we didn’t really know better. I’m not shaming anyone. It’s just what we did until recently. Going forward, though, it’s not justified and we shouldn’t be advocating for it now that we know better.
eta: and Kellogg isn’t irrelevant. That’s exactly why the practice has been embedded in American culture, so when we’re talking about why we do it, he’s extremely relevant.
https://www.cdc.gov/nchhstp/newsroom/docs/factsheets/MC-for-HIV-Prevention-Fact-Sheet_508.pdf
https://publications.aap.org/pediatrics/article/130/3/585/30235/Circumcision-Policy-Statement?autologincheck=redirected
https://www.who.int/teams/global-hiv-hepatitis-and-stis-programmes/hiv/prevention/voluntary-medical-male-circumcision