I think it’s worth pointing out that while 70% of American men are circumcised, only ~35-40% of American boys are currently being circumcised, so while it was the norm for our parents, it won’t be for our children.

I actually have my son circumcised, but I can see why they wouldn’t make religious exemptions. If you really think about it would we be okay if another religion said they had to cut the tip of their daughters labia off? I guess since it’s such an old tradition we are used to it.
With all that said, I would probably get my next son (if there is one) circumcised. I think that’s bad, but it’s the truth.

This is ridiculous. This is, and should always be, a choice. Why is this law even being considered? Soon everything we do will be illegal. Just because a certain group doesn’t agree with something, they feel the need to take things to extremes. Calm down people. You have the right to your opinion and your choices, but so does everyone else!

Another freedom of choice being taken away due to anti-groups. Why waste tax payers money to put it in the ballot? Really no point on voting on it since the anti-group will try to battle in court to have anything that the PEOPLE OF THE STATE OF CALIFORNIA voted “NO” to. Please! put my tax money towards good use…….

I’m generally in favor of government minding its own business, so usually I would be against just about any proposed bans. But, one thing I DO believe is the government’s job is to protect us from others. One person’s rights end whee another’s begins. In this case, to protect parental right to choose, the government would have to fail to protect the child’s rights.

As far as I know, there is no other body part that parents are allowed to choose to remove, unless it is already diseased. It seems kinda funny that doctors ask us parents to make a choice on this matter. Nobody asked me to sign any form about whether or not I wanted my son’s arm removed.

—-

About religion, a friend of mine who is a rabbi said that it should be illegal and jews should do it anyway. Something to ponder.

Circumcision is an outdated cultural habit that needs to go away. Parents still have their sons circumcised because they don’t want them to be different or weird, but the tide is turning, especially in more progressive parts of the country. I’ve known many adult men who wished they had not been circumcised, and uncircumcised men who were extremely grateful that they hadn’t been. Even as someone who grew up thinking circumcision was “normal,” that was enough to convince me I was wrong.

`First and foremost, circumcision is a human rights violation. No one should decide what healthy, functional organs to remove without that person’s consent, especially sexual organs. Circumcision involves ripping the foreskin from the glans (it’s fused at birth, very similar to how a nail is fused to a finger. We can use that for comparison: it’s equivalent to shoving a knife under your fingernail, all the way to the cuticle, to separate them) When using a plastibelll, the most common tool for circumcisions, the surgeon then cuts a dorsal slit to allow the bell to be placed under the foreskin.A string is then tied around the foreskin and it falls off a few days later, similar to when you dock a dog’s tail…pretty sad that is what we are comparing little baby boys most sensitive parts. Circumcision is an extremely painful procedure, especially for infants. An infant cannot be put under for the surgery because it is too dangerous. Most doctors do not use any type of numbing cream and the EMLA cream that is used has been proven not to work and they themselves issued a warning that it was not to be used for circumcisions. When a baby is circumcised a lot of parents will say their baby “went to sleep” this is actually a state of shock that the infants brain goes into because they cannot handle the excruciating pain. When grown men are circumcised, general anesthesia is used and for recovery, they get a heavy narcotic. That’s just how painful it is, infants get no pain relief. Circumcision is a surgery and just like any procedure it hold major risks; including death. It is estimated that 100-200 neonatal deaths occur in the US a year from circumcision. That is more than neonatal SIDS deaths, but SIDS is such a big deal in America and everyone tries to protect their babies from it. There are also numerous other risks that may not show until the boy has hit puberty. Many times a doctor will take too much of the skin off and the teen will get painful erections as the skin tries to stretch to accommodate a growing penis. No medical society in the world recommends this procedure and for good reason, too. It is a purely cosmetic surgery. Would I risk my infant’s life for a cosmetic surgery? No way!

I urge you to watch these videos and then really think a little bit of numbing cream (if even used) could take away all of that pain.

http://www.liveleak.com/view?i=0c1_1286228381

http://www.veoh.com/watch/e176471PJGJ6FGQ

So after even all of that, let’s just forget the fact that it’s so painful and barbaric. We will focus on the adult life. Run your fingertip down the back of your hand. Now run it down the palm of your hand. Clear difference. Notice how even after you stopped touching the palm of your hand you could still feel the line you drew with your fingertip. Your palm has Meissner’s corpsucles (touch-sensitive nerves) that the back of your hand does not. The male foreskin has 20-70,000 of these. When those nerves are removed you automatically lose approximately 3/4 of the sensation that is supposed to be felt. Also, the foreskin covers and protects the glans. When the glans is exposed for a period of time it basically calluses over. Just like you lose feeling on the side of a toe when it calluses, you lose feeling and sensitivity in the glans. That is why the US is one of the biggest and only users of Viagra. They also have the highest circumcision rate in adult males. ( Only 32% of new babies are now being circumcised) Erectile dysfunction is rampant among circumcised men, and very rarely is an uncircumcised male diagnosed with erectile dysfunction.

Most people circumcise because they believe it’s cleaner, when in fact, it’s much cleaner to be intact because there is no open wound sitting in a nasty diaper, putting that child at risk for MRSA on the fresh cut. The smegma that is produced underneath a male foreskin is minimal compared to what is found on/in a woman’s genitals and yet, that is not an issue. (Smegma actually protects the glans so it shouldn’t be considered a “problem”)

Here are just a few statistics:

Out of 100 Circumcised boys:

75 will not readily breastfeed post-op
55 will have adverse reactions from the surgery
35 will have post-op hemorrhaging to one degree or another
31 will develop meatal ulcers
10 will need to have the circumcision surgery repeated to fix prior surgical problems/error
8 will suffer infection at the surgical site
3 will develop post-operative phimosis
2 will have a more serious complication (seizure, heart attack, stroke, loss of penis, death)
1 will require additional immediate surgery and sutures to stop hemorrhage
1 will develop fibrosis
1 will develop phimosis
1 will be treated with antibiotics for a UTI (urinary tract infection)
1 will be treated with antibiotics for surgical site infection
100 will lose a very sensitive sexual organ

Of those who do receive pain medication for the surgery (about 4% of those boys undergoing circumcision in the U.S.) some will have adverse reactions to the pain medication injected

Out of 100 Intact boys:

2 will be treated with antibiotics for a UTI (fewer if the foreskin is never forcibly retracted- which is what usually causes complications during childhood)

1 will be told to get cut later in life for one reason or another (fewer if the foreskin is never forcibly retracted)

Circumcision is a human rights issue. Noone has any right to remove a healthy part of an infant’s body.

The government’s job is to protect citizens. Baby boys are citizens too. Let them decide if they want their own penis’s altered. His body, his choice. Why does our country protect baby girls but not baby boys?

One more thing to consider: Just about everyone would consider it wrong if the parents were to have their 18 year old son (who wasn’t circumcised) forcibly held down and circumcised against his will. Everyone would say that as an adult it’s his decision.

But when you circumcise a baby, you’re also taking that choice away from the adult he will become. For every day of my adult life, I have been, and will continue to be, denied the right to choose for myself as a result of what was done to me as an infant.

Of course what happened to me can’t be undone, but as a society we CAN decide that this won’t happen to anyone else. That it’s not acceptable to take away someone’s right to choose about THEIR OWN genitals.

I support this ban 100%.
It is not about removing parental rights, it is about protecting personal rights. The rights of men to make their own choices about their genitals.
There are MANY decisions we must make for our children. That is part of our responsibility as parents. However, this should NOT be one of them. Routine Infant Circumcision is a medically unnecessary COSMETIC surgery on an individual who is unable to consent. That makes it completely unethical and not a valid parental choice.
(And I am talking only about routine circ, barring an actual medical need) There is NO reason that this type of procedure cannot be delayed until the age of consent of the individual owning the genitals.
Up until 1997 in this country, female circ was legal. Now it is not. What is the difference? Why are our daughters protected by law, but not our sons? There should be no difference. Equal rights, equal protection. It has to start somewhere.

Jenn m, please do some more research on female circumcision before you go around talking about it. The most commonly practiced form of FGM is the removal of the clitoral hood, the female foreskin, and it is an even smaller amount of skin than what is taken off baby boys… But even that is illegal in the US. Even a minor ritual pin prick of a girls genitals is illegal. The countries that practice FGM, either religiously or culturally, claim the same benefits as those who practice male circumcision, so shouldn’t we be allowed to remove the labia and clitoral hood from baby girls? It won’t damage them any more than a baby boy is damaged. Actually female circumcision of the labia and clitoral hood would be less damaging than male circumcision because it only removes some skin whereas male circumcision makes the glans, a piece designed to be an internal organ of sorts, into an external part.

So basically what I’m saying is that female circumcision isn’t always the extreme you think it is and since ALL forms of female circumcision, even the less harmful types, are illegal than it is extremely hypocritical and ignorant to say that girls should be protected but boys shouldn’t.

There are health benefits to circumcision. It is dishonest to deny that.

It is absolutely false that circumcision is less painful as an adult. I do not care one way or another if you choose to circumcise your baby or not. However, there are some instances where a circumcision is absolutely necessary, such as with both of my sons. They both have a congenital genitourinary condition similar to hypospadius. Why should we wait until they’re 18 to repair this when we can do it under general anesthesia when they’re 6 months old and will never remember or suffer embarrassment or problems with potty training? The issue is not as cut and dry as so many of the over-zealous intactivists make it out to be. A “no exemption” out and out ban would be very detrimental to other little boys like mine.

The bill to ban the nonconsensual, forced cutting of minors in San Francisco is a major milestone in the fight for human rights. The freedom to keep all of the body parts with which one is born is a basic civil right with no exceptions.

The foreskin has been an important part of mammalian and human anatomy for over 100 million years of evolution. Research by Morris Sorrells, MD indicates that circumcision removes the most sensitive parts of the penis.

Only the owner of the penis has the right to decide if part of it should be amputated. Parents do not have the right to amputate any of their child’s body parts. 70% of men in the world are intact and they are doing just fine.

Also, circumcision will not protect men from acquiring HIV. Half a million circumcised American men have already died from AIDS. In the United States, about 75% of the adult male population is circumcised, and adult HIV prevalence is 0.6%. In countries where males are left intact, HIV rates are significantly lower, such as China (0.1%), India (0.3%), Sweden (0.1%), Germany (0.1%), Mexico (0.3%), and Japan (0.1%).

Although my husband and I have decided against circumcision if our baby is a boy (something I’m not certain if all of my family, who have always circumcized, is aware of yet!), I believe it should be the informed choice of the parents, not a legal issue. Circumcision still has a number of vocal supporters in the medical community (albiet, there are now a number of vocal opponents in the medical community, as well). As long as the medical community remains as divided about the importance of this procedure or the importance of not having it done at all, I see no reason for lawmakers to intervene.