Globe and Mail - Canada June 10, 2011
Russell Crowe launches Twitter tirade: Circumcision is ‘barbaric’
DAVE MCGINN
Oscar-winning actor Russell Crowe is not a fan of circumcision.
“Circumcision is barbaric and stupid. Who are you to correct nature?” Crowe tweeted on Thursday. “Is it real that God requires a donation of foreskin? Babies are perfect.”
Crowe went on the tirade after one of his Twitter followers asked whether he should get his son circumcised.
Then, Crowe appealed to his Jewish friends, including the director Eli Roth, to end the traditional practice of circumcising children.
“I love my Jewish friends, I love the apples and the honey and the funny little hats, but stop cutting your babies,” he wrote. “I will always stand for the perfection of babies. I will always believe in God, not man’s interpretation of what God requires,” he added. “Last of it, if you feel it is your right to cut things off your babies please unfollow and f--k off; I’ll take attentive parenting over barbarism.”
Not surprisingly, the messages have landed Crowe in hot water. His tweets have been deleted, and early Friday morning the actor apologized to anyone he may have offended.
“I have a deep and abiding love for all people of all nationalities. I’m very sorry that I have said things on here that have caused distress. My personal believes aside I realize that some will interpret this debate as me mocking the rituals and traditions of others. I am very sorry.”
Roth has been defending Crowe on his Twitter feed since the scandal broke, saying it was just a joke and that Crowe is “NOT antisemitic.”
This article was found at:
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CNN June 10, 2011
San Francisco's proposed circumcision ban galvanizes religious opposition
By Dan Gilgoff, CNN.com Religion Editor
San Francisco's proposed circumcision ban galvanizes religious opposition
By Dan Gilgoff, CNN.com Religion Editor
(CNN) - The nation’s largest evangelical Christian umbrella group has come out against San Francisco’s proposed circumcision ban, evidence that the voter initiative is beginning to galvanize national religious opposition.
Thursday’s announcement from the National Association of Evangelicals was noteworthy because unlike Jews and Muslims, Christians are not religiously mandated to practice circumcision.
“Jews, Muslims, and Christians all trace our spiritual heritage back to Abraham. Biblical circumcision begins with Abraham,” said National Association of Evangelicals president Leith Anderson. “No American government should restrict this historic tradition. Essential religious liberties are at stake."
"The proposed ban violates the First Amendment’s guarantee to exercise one’s religious beliefs," Anderson said in a statement.
How much of a national issue the ban becomes is yet to be seen. An effort to put a circumcision ban on the ballot in Santa Monica, California was abandoned last week.
Many Jewish and Muslim groups have come out against San Francisco’s proposed ban on the procedure that removes the foreskins of infant boys.
Jewish groups have suggested anti-Semitic motives behind the ban. Here’s Nancy J. Appel, associate regional director for the Anti-Defamation League:
This is a sensitive, serious issue where good people can disagree and which the Jewish community feels is an assault on its values and traditions going back thousands of years and centered in the Hebrew Bible.
And here’s influential Los Angeles Rabbi David Wolpe:
Some involved are simply opposed to religion (there are after all some misguided Jews arguing for the ban as well), some wish to target both Muslims and Jews. But can anyone doubt that there are anti-circumcision advocates who seize on this as a chance to hurt Jews and the Jewish tradition?
Many Jewish groups, including the Anti-Defamation League, alleged that a comic book called “Foreskin Man,” created by the proposed San Francisco ban’s author,draws on centuries-old stereotypes about Jews. [see related articles links below]
Just as the National Association of Evangelicals did Thursday, some Muslim groups have called the ban an attack on religious freedom:
A ban that specifically targets a religious practice of Muslims and that has been proven to be medically beneficial is a violation of First Amendment rights that guarantees all Americans the right to religious freedom.
The proposed ban would make it "unlawful to circumcise, excise, cut, or mutilate the whole or any part of the foreskin, testicles, or penis" of anyone 17 or younger in San Francisco.
Violators could be jailed for a year or fined up to $1,000.
The group that drafted the ban's language says the procedure has adverse physical and psychological effects and likens it to female genital mutilation, a claim that doctors generally reject.
In November 2010, CNN reported that medical evidence had shown mixed risks and benefits of circumcision:
Apart from the San Francisco proposal, circumcisions are under scientific scrutiny.
While widespread in the United States, circumcision rates could be falling, according to recent surveys. About 65 percent of American male infants born in hospitals were circumcised in 1999, according to latest data available from the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention.
While nationally the circumcision rate has remained steady, the most dramatic decline occurred in the West, where it fell from 64 percent in 1974 to 37 percent in 1999.
Earlier this year, there were unconfirmed estimates that the circumcision rate had fallen to fewer than half for boys born in U.S. hospitals, The New York Times reported last summer, citing a federal report at the International AIDS Conference.
The American Academy of Pediatrics task force on circumcision has been reviewing recent research before it issues an official new position on the issue, probably next year, one panel member said.
"In the past, we've said newborn circumcision has benefits and risks," Dr. Douglas Diekema, a professor of pediatrics at the University of Washington, told CNN last year. "Given the fact that neither the risks nor benefits are particularly compelling, this is a decision to be made by parents."
This article was found at:
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TIME - June 13, 2011
San Francisco's Circumcision Ban: An Attack on Religious Freedom?
TIME - June 13, 2011
San Francisco's Circumcision Ban: An Attack on Religious Freedom?
By Adam Cohen
In the 1960s and '70s, the San Francisco Bay Area was where the counterculture really started — the Free Speech Movement in Berkeley, the Summer of Love in Haight-Ashbury, gay rights in the Castro. Today, the Bay Area is challenging the larger culture in a new and controversial way: there will be a referendum on the ballot in November that would make it the first major city in the U.S. to outlaw circumcision.
The San Francisco debate over circumcision initially centered on the value of the procedure itself — opponents call it barbaric, supporters point to its long tradition and say it prevents disease. But increasingly the debate is becoming one about religion, in which critics accuse backers of the referendum of bigotry and insist a ban would violate the First Amendment's religious freedoms.
There is plenty of reason to oppose the ban on its own merits. There is no need for a law: if people do not believe in circumcision, they should not have it done to themselves or their children. And even if there were to be a circumcision ban, this one is poorly constructed because of the well-founded religious objections that are being raised.
The anticircumcision debate began in April when a group of self-proclaimed "intactivists" — people who believe strongly that infant boys have a right to keep their foreskins intact — submitted enough signatures to put a circumcision ban on the ballot. The intactivists have taken up the language of international human rights: they are fighting, they say, for "genital autonomy" and "male-genital-integrity rights." Framed this way, it seemed like an appropriately earnest next step for a city that last year banned any kind of Happy Meal that paired toy giveaways with fast food.
The intactivists argue that circumcision needlessly inflicts pain on newborns, and they compare it to female genital mutilation — which is, in fact, a far more serious procedure. (Female genital mutilation can produce severe harm, including infertility and an increased risk of newborn deaths.)
Supporters of circumcision argue that there is a long tradition behind it, both religious and nonreligious, and that the pain involved is fleeting. They also say circumcision has proven health benefits. Removal of the foreskin has been found to help prevent the spread of HIV and other infections. In clinical trials in Africa, the incidence of HIV infection was 60% lower in circumcised men. The World Health Organization has said circumcision is an important component in fighting HIV infection.
Still, the drafters of the San Francisco referendum could have avoided the religious issue — and kept the focus on the harms and benefits of circumcision — if they had included an exception for circumcisions done for religious reasons. Jews, whose religious traditions require male children to be circumcised eight days after birth, and Muslims, who also practice circumcision, are a small part of the city's population.
Instead, the referendum expressly states that the ban would apply equally to religious circumcisions. If it passes, Jewish parents in San Francisco who hold a traditional bris, or circumcision ritual, could be sentenced to a year in jail.
This strict policy certainly seems insensitive. Jews who circumcise their sons trace the tradition back thousands of years. It is a sign, they believe, of a covenant with God, and an affirmation that the Jewish people will survive. There are accounts of circumcisions performed in the direst of circumstances, including in concentration camps. The intactivists aren't swayed by such arguments and insist it's gone on long enough.
Claims of insensitivity, however, have recently turned into charges of outright anti-Semitism. One of the referendum's key supporters has written a comic book, Foreskin Man, that portrays a blond, Aryan-looking superhero doing battle with "Monster Mohel." (Mohels are people trained to perform ritual Jewish circumcisions.) The bearded, prayer-shawl-wearing mohel leers manically at defenseless infants. As one rabbi blogger put it, "Hey San Francisco, 1930's Germany Called — They Want Their Anti-Semitic Propaganda Back!"
Jews and Muslims are not the only religious groups opposing the ban. The National Association of Evangelicals, which represents 45,000 churches, declared last week that while their faith neither requires nor forbids circumcision, "Jews, Muslims and Christians all trace our spiritual heritage back to Abraham. Circumcision begins with Abraham. No American government should restrict this historic tradition."
If the referendum passes, it is unclear whether it would survive a constitutional challenge. The First Amendment protects people against laws that unduly interfere with their religious rituals. The question is, How would the courts see this particular interference? In 1972, the Supreme Court upheld the right of Amish parents to not send their children to school past the eighth grade. Yet more recently, it held that the "free exercise" clause does not protect Native Americans who want to engage in ritual use of peyote, an illegal drug. Under the logic of the peyote case, the ban could well survive. The ban could also be challenged under California's state constitution, which might contain broader religious protections than the U.S. Constitution.
On one level, the stakes in the San Francisco vote are small. If the referendum passes, parents can easily take their children out of the city to be circumcised. The danger, though, is that intactivism could spread — and that more localities, and eventually states, will enact bans.
On the other hand, the intactivist movement could come to a quick end. Last week, an activist who had been collecting signatures to put a similar referendum on the ballot in Santa Monica, Calif., announced that she was halting her effort because, she said, a cause that was not intended to be about religion had become a religious issue.
Cohen, a former TIME writer and a former member of the New York Times editorial board, is a lawyer who teaches at Yale Law School. Case Study, his legal column for TIME.com, appears every Monday.
This article was found at:
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Posts
San Francisco judge removes circumcision ban from ballot By Madison Park, CNN July 28, 2011
ReplyDeletehttp://www.cnn.com/2011/HEALTH/07/28/circumcision.ban.voting/index.html
San Francisco residents will not be voting on whether male circumcisions should be banned in the city this fall.A Superior Court judge ordered Thursday that the proposed measure, which had initially made it onto the November 8 city ballot, be removed entirely.
The measure proposed banning male circumcisions with the penalty of jail time or a $1,000 fine. It would not have granted religious exemptions.
From the beginning, the controversial ballot measure faced strong resistance from medical, religious and civil liberties groups.
Superior Court Judge Loretta Giorgi wrote that male circumcision is "a widely practiced medical procedure" and that medical services are left to the regulation of the state, not individual cities. The judge's ruling was hailed by the Jewish Community Relations Council, the Anti-Defamation League and others who had sued to remove the measure from the ballot.
"While we are confident that the overwhelming majority of San Franciscans would have voted to defeat this extreme measure and are grateful for the outpouring of support from every sector of the community, we believe the right decision was made in the right venue," said Abby Michelson Porth, associate director of Jewish Community Relations Council.
The plaintiff's efforts were also supported by the American Civil Liberties Union and San Francisco's Medical Society. And even the San Francisco City Attorney's office expressed concerns about whether the measure was constitutional. "It's unusual for a judge to order an initiative off the ballot, but the proposed circumcision ban presented that rare case where the court should block an election on an initiative," said ACLU Northern California staff attorney Margaret Crosby in a released statement. "Not only is the ban patently illegal, it also threatened family privacy and religious freedom. The court's order protects fundamental constitutional values in San Francisco."
Anti-circumcision advocates who had gathered more than 7,000 signatures to put the measure on the ballot expressed disappointment and said they would appeal. "To remove an initiative before it comes on ballot is an extraordinarily irregular thing to do," said Lloyd Schofield, who is part of a Bay Area advocacy group that says the surgery violates human rights and likens it to "male genital mutilation."
"To go to this length to have it struck from the ballot is undemocratic," he said. "It's very, very unfortunate."
Circumcision: ‘Mutilation’ or an ‘act of love’?
ReplyDeletehttp://news.nationalpost.com/2011/08/19/circumcision-mutilation-or-an-act-of-love/
Rebecca Wald is “100% Jewish.” She celebrates the high holidays, her children attend Hebrew school, she lights candles on the sabbath and she was married to a “100% Jewish” man under a chuppah at a traditional Jewish wedding.
But unlike most Jews, from the most secular to the ultra-orthodox, she did not circumcise her son. She has never attended — will never attend — a bris, the age-old ceremony where a Jew trained in circumcision (a ‘mohel’) removes the foreskin of an eight-day-old Jewish boy as a sign of his covenant with God.
“All of the babies I saw growing up — whether cousins or the kids I babysat — were circumcised, and it seemed like that was the way things were supposed to be,” said Ms. Wald, who in December launched Beyond the Bris, a website for Jews who question circumcision. “It took having a son, who is intact, for me to really accept how normal [the uncircumcised penis] is.”
The South Florida mom is among a growing and vocal minority of Jewish “intactivists” who are challenging the 4,000-year-old ritual because, they say, the procedure inflicts unnecessary pain without any health gains, causes long-term psychological harm, hinders sexual function and pleasure, and strikes at the core of consent. They say there are Jewish women who silently pray they will not bear a son, and that the question, ‘When’s the bris?’ is too presumptive.
Ms. Wald has not yet told her young son about her decision — she did not want to disclose his age. “Like many Jewish parents of intact sons, we’re not thrilled to publicly discuss the status of our own children’s sex organs,” she said — but said she assumes he will “at some point” learn about it.
“I imagine he’s going to be thankful that we spared him from this mutilation,” said Ms. Wald, adding that had she been born a boy, her “forward-thinking” parents would not have circumcised her.
Beyond the Bris has attracted more than 9,000 visitors from 89 countries in the past eight months, chiming into the burgeoning chorus of like-minded Jewish groups such as Jews Against Circumcision, the Jewish Circumcision Resource Center, the Israeli Association Against Genital Mutilation, and the Israel-based group Kahal.
Intactivist organizations like these have existed for years — one of which was criticized as anti-Semitic for its comic series called Foreskin Man, with characters such as Dr. Mutilator and Monster Mohel. But this latest slew of opponents is unique in that they are led by people whose own religion demands circumcision.
...
“If the Jewish identity comes down to whether or not you have a piece of skin on your penis, then that’s a very sad thing for the Jewish people,” Ms. Wald said, pointing out that a child is Jewish if he or she is born to a Jewish mother.
“There are no religious consequences of not being circumcised — the boy could still have a bar mitzvah, for example,” echoed Eli Ungar-Sargon, the Jewish filmmaker whose tour starts in Los Angeles in September, with stops in Toronto, Montreal, and Vancouver in October. “The consequences are imagined and invented. They’re not actual.”
He said there has been a “cultural shift” since his film launched four years ago, and said the issue “caught fire” with Lloyd Schofield’s attempt to ban circumcision in San Francisco this year — a ban he supports in principle.
read the rest at the link above
Cut: Slicing Through the Myths of Circumcision (Abridged
ReplyDeleteThe critically acclaimed documentary on male circumcision by Chicago filmmaker Eli Ungar-Sargon.
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=bx89xECfHG4&feature=player_embedded
For the unabridged version, please buy the DVD at:
www.CutTheFilm.com
Brown signs bills on male circumcision and synthetic pot
ReplyDeleteThe circumcision bill, sponsored by Assemblyman Mike Gatto, aims to 'protect parental rights and liberties.'
By Anthony York October 2, 2011
Reporting from Sacramento -- Local governments will be unable to ban male circumcision under a new state law signed by Gov. Jerry Brown.
The bill, by Assemblyman Mike Gatto (D-Silver Lake), was drafted in response to a proposed San Francisco ballot measure that would have prohibited any foreskin cutting that was not deemed medically necessary in that city. That proposed ordinance was struck from the ballot by a Superior Court judge in June, amid protests from doctors and religious groups. A similar measure was proposed in Santa Monica but was later pulled back by proponents.
Gatto said his measure, signed Sunday, would "protect parental rights and liberties."
The bill was one of 44 measures approved by Brown, who has hundreds more on his desk that must be approved or vetoed by Oct. 9. Brown also vetoed four bills Sunday.
...
http://www.latimes.com/news/local/la-me-brown-bills-20111003,0,4385092.story
Controversial Jewish filmmaker brings his documentary "CUT: Slicing Through theMyths of Circumcision" to Vancouver
ReplyDeleteOctober 13, 2011 (FOR IMMEDIATE RELEASE) — Jewish filmmaker Eliyahu Ungar-Sargon opposes infant circumcision, and he is taking his hard-hitting documentary "CUT: Slicing Through the Myths of
Circumcision" on a two-month screening tour to spread his message across North America. On October 24, Vancouver’s Canadian Foreskin
Awareness Project (in association with The WHOLE Network) will present CUT at a special one-night event at the Roundhouse Community Centre.
Raised in an Orthodox Jewish household, Ungar-Sargon reached adulthood so disturbed by the ritual of infant circumcision that he ultimately
dropped out of medical school to make CUT. A powerful and deeply personal film, CUT examines infant male circumcision from religious,
scientific, and ethical perspectives, exploring the conflict between personal ethics and what many believe is a religious obligation.
Combining contemporary research with revealing interviews with rabbis, philosophers, scientists, and family members, CUT challenges viewers to confront their biases by asking difficult questions about this ancient and increasingly controversial practice.
“If you’ve never seen a circumcision and you’re contemplating doing this to another human being, I think you owe it to yourself to watch
something like this.” - CUT director Eliyahu Ungar-Sargon, SF Weekly, September 22 2011
http://blogs.sfweekly.com/thesnitch/2011/09/eli_ungar-sargon_cut_circumcision.php
Canadian Foreskin Awareness Project founder Glen Callender jumped at the chance to screen CUT in Vancouver, because he feels it represents
an important Jewish perspective that is too often overlooked by the news media. “Journalists typically portray Jews as having a uniformly
pro-infant circumcision point of view,” states Callender. “CUT reveals that, in reality, many Jews have difficulty reconciling infant
circumcision with modern values of personal freedom and human rights.”
“If you really understand what circumcision is, and the issues around it, you are forced to question what kind of Jew you want to be.”
- Eliyahu Ungar-Sargon, Boulder Weekly, October 13 2011
http://www.boulderweekly.com/article-6674-film-questions-the-practice-of-circumcision.html
Joining Ungar-Sargon for a post-screening discussion will be Dr. Paul Tinari, the only Canadian man to date who has received a
government-funded foreskin restoration. (Additional participants TBC.)
Preview CUT at http://cutthefilm.com/Cut_Website/The_Film.html
"CUT: Slicing Through the Myths of Circumcision" will screen in Room B of Roundhouse Community Centre (181 Roundhouse Mews) Monday October 24 at 8:15pm sharp. Director Q&A and discussion will follow. Admission free/by donation. Underground parking available (enter off Drake
Street).
Media contacts:
Director Eliyahu Ungar-Sargon: 312-925-9819 / cutdocumentary@gmail.com
CAN-FAP founder Glen Callender: 604-628-7012 / GlenCallender@gmail.com
Canadian Foreskin Awareness Project (CAN-FAP)
http://can-fap.net
Cut: Slicing Through the Myths of Circumcision
http://cutthefilm.com/
Senegal Curbs a Bloody Rite for Girls and Women
ReplyDeleteBy CELIA W. DUGGER NYT October 15, 2011
SARE HAROUNA, Senegal — When Aissatou Kande was a little girl, her family followed a tradition considered essential to her suitability to marry. Her clitoris was sliced off with nothing to dull the pain. But on her wedding day, Ms. Kande, her head modestly covered in a plain white shawl, vowed to protect her own daughters from the same ancient custom. Days later, her village declared it would abandon female genital cutting for good.
Across the continent, an estimated 92 million girls and women have undergone it. But like more than 5,000 other Senegalese villages, Sare Harouna has joined a growing movement to end the practice. The change has not yet reached Ms. Kande’s new home in her husband’s village, but if elders there pressured her to cut the baby girl she is taking into the marriage, she said, “I would resist them.” Her parents back her up.
“They would never dare do that to my granddaughter, and we would never allow it,” said Ms. Kande’s mother, Marietou Diamank. The movement to end genital cutting is spreading in Senegal at a quickening pace through the very ties of family and ethnicity that used to entrench it. And a practice once seen as an immutable part of a girl’s life in many ethnic groups and African nations is ebbing, though rarely at the pace or with the organized drive found in Senegal.
The change is happening without the billions of dollars that have poured into other global health priorities throughout the developing world in recent years. Even after campaigning against genital cutting for years, the United Nations has raised less than half the $44 million it set as the goal.
But here in Senegal, Tostan, a group whose name means “breakthrough” in Wolof, Senegal’s dominant language, has had a major impact with an education program that seeks to build consensus, African-style, on the dangers of the practice, while being careful not to denounce it as barbaric as Western activists have been prone to do. Senegal’s Parliament officially banned the practice over a decade ago, and the government has been very supportive of Tostan’s efforts. “Before you would never even dare to discuss this,” said Mamadou Dia, governor of the Kolda region where this village is located. “It was taboo. Now you have thousands of people coming to abandon it.”
read the full article at:
http://www.nytimes.com/2011/10/16/world/africa/movement-to-end-genital-cutting-spreads-in-senegal.html
Cult blamed for growth in female circumcision
ReplyDeleteBy JOYCE KIMANI, Daily Nation - Kenya
November 22, 2011
A religious cult has been blamed for rising cases of female circumcision in Naivasha and its environs.
Women say although the tradition is almost extinct in the area, the cult is forcing its members to circumcise girls.
Most take place in Naivasha, Maai Mahiu, Kinangop and Narok.
It is expected that there will be an increase in female circumcision cases in Narok and the rest of Maasai Land because they hold on strongly to their culture.
Councillor Esther Njeri has mobilised people in these areas to fight what is considered in the region to be an important and ancient rite of passage from girl to womanhood.
They will be seeking to arrest traditional circumcisers who force young girls to be circumcised.
Ms Njeri said that they had started persuading members of the religious organisation to end the circumcisions.
She said many school-age children had come out and confessed that they were forced.
“The children call us and tell us when they learn that their parents are planning to circumcise them. So far, we have rescued more than 10 girls from members of the religious sect,” she said.
The councillor said that most of the girls are circumcised during the December school holidays.
She said that in some Maasai primary schools, girls are told to write a composition on the dangers of female circumcision, Ms Njeri said.
Naivasha district commissioner Hellen Kiilu cautioned women who still practise the female cut that they were breaking the law.
She said a crackdown had been launched to curb the practice.
http://www.nation.co.ke/News/regional/Cult+blamed+for+growth+in+female+circumcision+/-/1070/1277746/-/j0wtswz/-/
Infant male circumcision is genital mutilation
ReplyDeleteby Martin Robbins, The Lay Scientist December 6, 2011
There are still many people who like to pretend that infant circumcision and genital mutilation are not the same thing. Some of them apparently work at Indonesia's health ministry, the Departemen Kesehatan, who recently issued guidelines for 'safe' female circumcision and wheeled out a spokeswoman to dispense the following words of wisdom: "I would like to stress that female circumcision is not genital mutilation, which is indeed dangerous. They are two things that are very different."
This nonsense comes from the same ministry that recently pushed the idea that swine flu was an American conspiracy - a sinister plot to achieve something or other through some improbable chain of unlikely events – and it isn't surprising that logic isn't their strong point. And yet the same attitude is widespread in Britain. Thousands of people believe, against all logic and reason, that male infant circumcision is somehow not genital mutilation.
Mutilation is a loaded term, so let me be clear what I mean. I don't mean that circumcision is mutilation. If consenting adults want to modify their bodies by snipping a bit off here or adding a bit there, then that's their right, and beauty is very much in the eye of the beholder.
Infant circumcision is a completely different matter. Infant circumcision involves performing surgery without consent to permanently alter an individual's genitals. In many cases this is done without good medical justification, for example to force the infant to conform to the expectations of a particular religion. Just as we call sex without consent 'rape', circumcision without consent or reasonable justification should be called 'mutilation'.
The practice became popular in the United States as a 19th century tool to stop boys masturbating. Female circumcision is ultimately a brutal means of oppressing women's sexuality, and male circumcision was intended to achieve the same.
Writing about the practice in 1978, Karen Paige suggested that, "When a custom persists after its original functions have died, it may be accorded the status of a ritual." Circumcision failed to stop masturbation, but became engrained in the American consciousness as a bizarre rite-of-passage, a throw-back to the burnings, whippings and cuttings still practised in other tribes around the world.
Divorced from its original purpose, circumcision has become a treatment in search of a disease, and post hoc justifications abound. Surveys suggest that the two most common rationalizations invoked by parents are hygiene and appearance. The hygiene argument is self-evidently daft – for no other part of the body do we advocate "chop it off" over "wash it more thoroughly" as the preferred option for improving hygiene. As for aesthetics, for a parent to be that concerned about the cosmetic appearance of their baby son's sexual organs is frankly a bit disturbing, but surely it should be for the individual to decide?
Health benefits of circumcision are commonly cited, but tend to evaporate when challenged, with medical professional bodies tending to dismiss it as a question of personal choice. The British Medical Association for example states that, "the medical harms or benefits have not been unequivocally proven but there are clear risks of harm if the procedure is done inexpertly." ...
read the rest of the article at:
http://www.guardian.co.uk/science/the-lay-scientist/2011/dec/06/1
Dad who botched circumcision loses court appeal
ReplyDeleteThe Canadian Press December 22, 2011
A B.C. man who performed a botched circumcision on his four-year-old son on the kitchen floor of his home has lost an appeal of his conviction and been found guilty of a more serious charge.
The B.C. Court of Appeal has stayed the man's conviction for criminal negligence causing bodily harm and convicted him of aggravated assault.
Court heard the boy was born premature at only 2.5 pounds and could not be circumcised at the time, nor did his parents request it.
But the court found the boy's father "changed his world view" over the ensuing years.
"He came to understand that there was great utility in keeping the laws of Moses, including that of circumcision," the appeal ruling said.
The trial judge found "that the accused decided that because so many disasters had befallen his family, he had to 'make things right with God."'
The man, who had no medical training, tried to do the circumcision in 2007 after doctors refused to do it on the grounds the operation would require a general anesthesic, which couldn't be justified on a boy that age.
Court documents say the man gave alcohol to the boy, referred to only by the initials D.J., and used a blade that was not as sharp as a surgical instrument. To stanch the bleeding, the man used a veterinary powder suitable only for livestock.
The boy was taken to hospital four days later and required corrective surgery, including a proper circumcision. The surgeon testified his penis would have healed to be badly deformed.
Among her reasons for convicting the man, the trial judge, who is not named, noted that the man had tried to circumcise himself a few years before he undertook the procedure on his son.
His actions caused "his foreskin to bleed in nine places, requiring the assistance of 911 and sutures in hospital," resulting in an infected penis.
"The accused was aware of the dangers of performing a circumcision on his son," the trial judge wrote.
The man, who was not named, was charged with criminal negligence causing bodily harm, aggravated assault and assault with a weapon for the incident with his son.
At the man's original trial, the judge in the case convicted him on the negligence charge but acquitted him on the assault charges.
He appealed his conviction, arguing his religious beliefs should have allowed him to do the procedure, but the Appeal Court rejected the appeal.
"The accused's religion did not demand that the circumcision be performed by the accused himself, nor did the trial judge find that religious necessity dictated that the circumcision be performed immediately so that the accused was left with no alternative but to perform the operation himself," the appeal court ruling said.
"Thus, it is not the accused's religious beliefs that are at issue, but the rights and best interests of D.J. with respect to whether he should have been subjected to an attempted circumcision by his father in the circumstances and conditions under which it was attempted."
The Crown appealed the acquittals on the assault charges and while the appeal court rejected the charge of assault with a weapon, it imposed a conviction on the charge of aggravated assault.
The court has ordered new sentencing for the man, who was originally given two years in prison under the criminal negligence charge.
http://www.cbc.ca/news/canada/british-columbia/story/2011/12/22/bc-botched-circumcision.html
Victory in sight for revolution over female genital mutilation
ReplyDeleteby Nina Lakhani, The Independent UK February 6, 2012
Amid the horrors surrounding female genital mutilation (FGM) there is a quiet revolution, which experts hope could lead to the eradication of the practice.
Thousands of rural communities across Africa, which have practiced FGM for centuries, are starting to abandon the tradition in response to grass-roots education programmes. Analysts are even daring to talk of eradication within two generations – something that was unimaginable even five years ago.
Another 2,000 communities in countries including Sudan, Somalia and Egypt rejected the practice in 2011.
FGM is a harmful social convention in which part, or all, of a girl's external genitals are removed. Each year around three million girls – 8,000 a day – face FGM. An estimated 130 million girls and women are living with painful complications.
FGM occurs within 28 African countries, but also the Middle East, in Yemen, Oman and UAE, and parts of Asia including Malaysia. Girls are generally aged between five and 11; most girls are cut without anaesthetic using an unsterilised blade.
Tostan, a community-based human rights organisation, which originates in Senegal, has an FGM abandonment success rate of 77 per cent and is working in eight other African countries. The first community rejected the practice in 1997.
Traditionally, an uncut girl is considered unsuitable for marriage and maybe rejected by her community. This is why the community-based approach used by the NGO Tostan has succeeded where many others have failed. It involves whole communities, including the men, in rejecting the practice.
Julia Lalla-Maharajh, founder of UK charity Orchid, which supports Tostan, said: "The exponential rise in communities rejecting FGM means we can start to think about eradication in our lifetime. In 1899, 94 per cent of Chinese girls had their feet bound; by 1919 this was down to zero.
"We know that Tostan's approach works, so it is now a matter of resources."
Latest figures from the UN show that 8,000 communities have abandoned both FGM and forced marriage. This includes 5,315 in Senegal, 670 in Sudan, 600 in Guinea, and 92 in Djibouti.
In 2008, the UNFPA, the United Nations Fund for Population Activities, and UNICEF, the UN children's fund, asked members to donate $40m (£25.3m) to fund an initiative called Acceleration of the Abandonment of FGM. It has received only half of the money so far.
The Minister for International Development, Stephen O'Brien, witnessed first-hand the impact of FGM during a recent visit to Senegal. The UK currently funds projects in Senegal and Kenya. "Tostan's success has shown the world what can be done, and gives us confidence that even behaviour so deeply embedded in culture can be changed. It means the DfID is looking a lot more to help stamp out this millennia-old practise... and part of that will be supporting research to see how we can scale up what Tostan does without losing its community essence."
In the most extreme form of FGM, the entire external genitals are cut away. The wound left will be sewn up, with only a tiny hole left for menstrual blood and urine. Around the time of her wedding, a young woman will be cut open, just enough for penetrative sex. She is also further cut to give birth, then re-sewn.
IN NUMBERS
62%: Amount of 15 to 19-year-olds subjected to FGM in Ethiopia, compared to an 81 per cent rate among 35 to 39-year-olds.
140m: Estimated number of women globally subjected to FGM
5,315: The number of villages in Senegal that were known to use FGM – that have signed public declarations abandoning it.
17: African countries to pass laws banning practice
http://www.independent.co.uk/news/world/politics/victory-in-sight-for-revolution-over-female-genital-mutilation-6579560.html
Brooklyn DA Looking Into Infant's Death From Controversial Bris Practice
ReplyDeleteHella Winston, Special To the Jewish Week March 5, 2012
After the death of an infant who contracted herpes during a controversial circumcision practice, the Brooklyn District Attorney’s office said it is investigating the case as a possible criminal matter.
Jerry Schmetterer, the spokesman for Brooklyn DA Charles Hynes, told The Jewish Week Monday, “Our Crimes Against Children Bureau is looking into this situation. I would not assume what any possible charges would be.”
As the Daily News reported on Sunday, a 2-week-old infant died at Brooklyn’s Maimonides Hospital in September after contracting the herpes simplex virus Type 1 during the practice of metzitzah b’peh, otherwise known as “oral suction,” or the suctioning of blood from the circumcision wound directly by mouth.
Neither the name of the child nor that of the ritual circumciser, or mohel, who performed the ritual has been released to the public. However, “herpes infections in infants aged 60 days or younger” are on the list of communicable diseases that require reporting to the New York State Department of Health.
The new death, which follows the herpes-related death of another infant in 2005 tied to the ritual practice, reignited calls this week for the government to regulate or ban the practice.
“The state has a compelling interest in protecting the health of children and needs to step in on an emergency basis to make sure this practice is halted immediately,” Marci Hamilton, a professor at Cardozo law school and an expert in church-state matters, told The Jewish Week.
“The DA should step in and this mohel should go to jail [for a felony],” Hamilton continued, adding that the state should create a criminal penalty for such behavior, which would be constitutional as long as it does not target direct oral suction as a Jewish behavior.
In response to a request by The Jewish Week for comment on this latest case, David Zwiebel, executive vice president of the ultra-Orthodox umbrella group Agudath Israel, noted that in 2006, the New York State Department of Health and a “broad array” of Orthodox rabbis signed off on a Circumcision Protocol Regarding the Prevention of Neonatal Herpes Transmission.
“We have no information whether the mohel [in the new case] took the precautionary hygienic steps outlined in the DOH Protocol, whether an investigation was done to determine the cause and source of the child’s infection, or what any such investigation may have determined,” Zwiebel said. “Until we know those things, I think it is premature for us — or anyone, for that matter — to offer public comment.”
The state guidelines were the subject of heated controversy at the time they were signed, as doctors and other medical experts claimed that the practices they outlined — including requiring mohels to sanitize their hands and rinse their mouths with mouthwash — did nothing to guard against the transmission of the herpes virus. Indeed, even the city’s health commissioner at the time, Dr. Thomas Frieden, expressed serious reservations about the sufficiency of the guidelines.
In fact, the website of the city’s Health Department currently notes that “there is no proven way to reduce the risk of metzitzah b’peh” and that, while “a mohel may use oral rinses or sip wine” before performing the ritual, “there is no evidence that these actions reduce the spread of herpes.” The site also states that “[a] mohel who takes antiviral medication may reduce the risk of spreading the virus during [the ritual], but there is no evidence that taking medication eliminates the risk.”
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ReplyDeleteAccording to state Health Department estimates, 54 percent of people in the U.S. are carriers of the virus, which remains dormant within the nerve cells between outbreaks and can still be transmitted absent any obvious signs and symptoms. Therefore the department has noted that “it is likely many mohelim performing metzitzah b’peh may place infants at risk of infection.” Because of the virus’ association with the nervous system, it poses significant threat of complications in newborns and can result in brain damage and even death.
Despite these warnings, metzitzah b’peh remains legal and continues to be practiced in some ultra-Orthodox circles, which view it as mandatory. Indeed, while early rabbinic law lists direct oral suction as one of the three steps involved in performing a bris, many decisors of Jewish law believe that it was never seen as an essential aspect of the bris, but something done to prevent health risks to the child after the circumcision.
In the 19th-century Rabbi Moshe Schreiber (The Chasam Sofer) ruled that direct oral suction is not an integral part of circumcision and, as such, other methods of drawing the blood were permissible. Rulings by 19th-century rabbis, including Samson Raphael Hirsch and Azriel Hildesheimer, publicized a ruling that metzitzah could be performed using a glass tube. Rabbi Chaim Soloveitchik (1853-1918), instructed mohels in Brisk not to do the suctioning with direct oral contact.
Several years ago, Rabbi Moshe Tendler, a microbiologist and professor of Talmud and medical ethics at Yeshiva University, argued that the known health risks associated with direct oral suction prohibit its practice under Jewish law.
News of this latest death comes nearly seven years after the death of an infant and the infection with the herpes virus of his twin and another child sparked a heated public controversy about the practice. Each of these three children underwent metzitzah b’peh by a prominent mohel, Rabbi Yitzchok Fischer. The city filed a legal complaint against Fischer to compel him to stop engaging in the practice while it investigated his connection to the infections, but he did not comply and the matter was ultimately referred by the city to a beit din, or religious tribunal, for review.
It is not known whether Fischer was involved in this most recent death. A 2010 form letter to rabbis from the state health commissioner notes that in July of 2007, the commissioner “restricted the practice of one mohel who was epidemiologically linked to several such cases,” though it did not name the mohel.
On the heels of the revelations about the cases linked to Fischer, the city’s health department issued a public warning about the practice, which touched off a firestorm in the ultra-Orthodox community. Some among the rabbinic leadership accused the health department of overstepping its authority and infringing on religious freedom and rabbis’ rights to regulate ritual practice. Mayor Michael Bloomberg and the Frieden, the health commissioner — both non-Orthodox Jews — were compared to Nazis and Russian czars.
Ultimately, the mayor intervened, promising to study the matter and, according to a story in The New York Times, noting that “it is not the government’s business to tell people how to practice their religion.” At the time, Rabbi David Niederman of the United Jewish Organization in Williamsburg told The Times that “the Orthodox Jewish community will continue the practice that has been practiced for over 5,000 years.”
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ReplyDeleteWhen it came to light that two more babies had been infected (apparently not by Fischer), Frieden issued an “Open Letter to the Jewish Community,” which recommended — but stopped short of requiring — a cessation of the practice altogether, instead endorsing alternatives to the practice, like using a sterile glass tube (which is done in modern Orthodox circles).
Frieden’s letter was met with renewed outrage by the ultra-Orthodox community. And, once again, the health department came under fire for what the community considered an overstepping of its bounds.
Agudath Israel’s Zwiebel told The Jewish Week at the time that, rather than advising parents to consult their mohel and pediatrician about the procedure, “[the letter] probably would have been more respectful to have said ‘consult your rabbi.’ It’s almost as if the health department didn’t want to encourage people to speak to their rabbi and figure out with him their traditional regulations.”
Zwiebel also told a well-regarded Jewish blogger that because “we … know … that any incidence of neonatal herpes after metzitzah b’peh is extremely rare, and that any incidence of serious harm is rarer still … given the fact that we’re talking about an essential religious practice, we feel it was inappropriate for the Health Department to issue this type of public warning.”
For its part, the state health department — then headed by Antonina Novello, appointed by Republican Gov. Pataki, who himself had strong ties to the Orthodox community — reached its own agreement with chasidic leaders in June of 2006, hailed by Rabbi Niederman in a press release as a “historic protocol” and the one to which Zwiebel referred to above.
The 2010 letter to rabbis from the commissioner of the state health department, referenced above, noted that “over the past five years” there have been “several documented cases” of herpes simplex Type 1 viruses in newborns who underwent metzitzah b’peh in New York City.
Calls and e-mails to Rabbi Niederman had received no response as of Monday afternoon. The current commissioners of the state and city health departments also did not provide comment in time for publication.
According to Rachel W, a chasidic woman who lives in Brooklyn and works in the health care field, but did not want to use her full name for fear of appearing to challenge the rabbis, “any government ban will only drive [metzitzah b’peh] underground, making neonatal herpes even less likely to be reported and treated.”
“If it is deemed unlawful,” she added, “it will also become an issue worth fighting over for my people. That’s why gaining the cooperation of the rabbis is the way to go.”
Cardozo’s Marci Hamilton, however, disagrees.
“This is an issue that absolutely cannot be left to the religious authorities. It is a violation of the child’s right to life and just basic moral values.”
http://www.thejewishweek.com/news/breaking_news/brooklyn_da_looking_infants_death_controversial_bris_practice
Female circumcision anger aired in India
ReplyDeleteBy Rupam Jain Nair | AFP – April 24, 2012
Eleven years ago, Farida Bano was circumcised by an aunt on a bunk bed in her family home at the end of her 10th birthday party.
The mutilation occurred not in Africa, where the practice is most prevalent, but in India where a small Muslim sub-sect known as the Dawoodi Bohra continues to believe that the removal of the clitoris is the will of God.
"We claim to be modern and different from other Muslim sects. We are different but not modern," Bano, a 21-year-old law graduate who is angry about what was done to her, told AFP in New Delhi.
She vividly remembers the moment in the party when the aunt pounced with a razor blade and a pack of cotton wool.
The Bohra brand of Islam is followed by 1.2 million people worldwide and is a sect of Shia Islam that originated in Yemen.
While the sect bars other Muslims from its mosques, it sees itself as more liberal, treating men and women equally in matters of education and marriage.
The community's insistence on "Khatna" (the excision of the clitoris) also sets it apart from others on the subcontinent.
"If other Muslims are not doing it then why are we following it?" Bano says.
For generations, few women in the tightly-knit community have spoken out in opposition, fearing that to air their grievances would be seen as an act of revolt frowned upon by their elders.
But an online campaign is now encouraging them to join hands to bury the custom.
The anti-Khatna movement gained momentum after Tasneem, a Bohra woman who goes by one name, posted an online petition at the social action platform Change.org in November last year.
She requested their religious leader, the 101-year-old Syedna Mohammed Burhanuddin, ban female genital mutilation, the consequences of which afflict 140 million women worldwide according to the World Health Organisation.
Syedna Mohammed Burhanuddin is the 52nd Dai-al Mutalaq (absolute missionary) of the community and has sole authority to decide on all spiritual and temporal matters.
Every member of the sect takes an oath of allegiance to the leader, who lives in western city of Mumbai.
When contacted by AFP, Burhanuddin's spokesman, Qureshi Raghib, ruled out any change and said he had no interest in talking about the issue.
"I have heard about the online campaign but Bohra women should understand that our religion advocates the procedure and they should follow it without any argument," he said.
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ReplyDeleteBut over 1,600 Bohra Muslim women have since signed the online petition.
Many describe the pain they experienced after the procedure and urge their leader to impose a ban.
"The main motive behind Khatna is that women should never enjoy sexual intercourse. We are supposed to be like dolls for men," 34-year-old Tabassum Murtaza, who lives in the western city of Surat, told AFP by telephone.
The World Health Organisation has campaigned against the practice, saying it exposes millions of girls to dangers ranging from infections, hemorrhaging, complicated child-birth, or hepatitis from unsterilised tools.
In the Middle East, it is still practised in Yemen, Saudi Arabia, Iraq, Jordan and Syria.
"It is an atrocity committed under the cloak of religion," says Murtaza, who along with her husband was asked to leave their family home when they refused to get their daughter circumcised.
"My mother-in-law said there was no room for religious disobedience and we should move out if we cannot respect the custom," she explained. "It is better to live on the street than humiliate your daughter's body."
Asghar Ali Engineer, a Bohra Muslim and expert on Islamic jurisprudence, has known the dangers of fighting for reform.
He has authored over 40 books proposing changes, particularly around the status of women, and has been attacked by hardliners inside a mosque in Egypt and had his house trashed by opponents.
While both France and the United States have laws enabling the prosecution of immigrants who perform female circumcisions, the practice remains legal in India and Engineer expects this to remain the case.
"Female circumcision is clearly a violation of human rights, the Indian government refuses to recognise it as a crime because the practice has full-fledged religious backing," he said.
"No government has the courage to touch a religious issue in India even if the practice is a crime against humanity."
He says many fathers are simply unaware of the damage they are doing by following the custom.
"I prevented my wife from getting our daughters circumcised but in many cases even fathers are not aware of the pain their daughters experience," he says.
http://news.yahoo.com/female-circumcision-anger-aired-india-094432311.html