I don't believe that is a judgment you can pass on everyone.
Not everyone, but since most men in the US who are circed were cut at birth it does apply to most people. As the status quo for a circumcised father choosing for his son, he question becomes something like "Do you want your son to be circumcised like you, or are you unhappy with your own circ job?"
I dont think they are trying to justify their own circumcisions. I think they truly feel it is the better form of a penis. Whether that is true or not is left up to debate. It actually stems from just about any choice a parent makes for a child.
If every person was making that choice rationally and fully informed I would have less of an issue with it. If they say, "Look, foreskin problems run in my family. I, my brothers, my dad, my uncles, and my grandfather have all needed to be circumcised for medical reasons at some point. I'd rather not have my son deal with that," then that's actually a very rational informed decision that almost everyone would agree with. In that particular case, it probably falls under the banner of preventive medicine.
However, people don't usually make this decision with that level of thought. I've talked to many parents who are expecting, and they had already decided to get their son circed just for aesthetic reasons (Because Daddy is). Like I said before, other parents would blanch at the risks they'd never been made aware of. I've only had a couple actually be interested in finding out more information about the procedure on their own. One even noted that the doctor asked for "consent" for circumcision by asking if the father was cut, assuming he would want the same for his child (lawsuit waiting to happen).
Parents research and debate about a great many decisions for their children, but circumcision is something many of them don't even give a second thought. If they asked their doctor, and he briefed them, honestly, on both sides it would go something like this:
"Circumcision is a procedure which removes the foreskin and all of its related structues from the person. Most of the reasons for which children have been circumcised in the past are false, so don't base your decision on that. It doesn't prevent STDs, and it isn't much harder to clean. While it does slightly change the rates of some diseases/conditions, in both directions, it doesn't outweigh the risks of the procedure enough for the American Medical Association or the American Academy of Pediatrics to recommend it routinely. The risks include excessive bleeding, partial penile amputation, and even death in rare cases, but the last two have never happened in our clinic. Some of the most recent research indicates that the foreskin does have mechanical functions in sex and masturbation. Other research indicates that circumcision can affect sexual pleasure, but that is still under debate. Also, some studies have indicated that it can affect the rates of HIV transmission, but it isn't a vaccine. Safe sex would still be required to prevent it. Do you have any questions?"
Clear, concise, covers about everything we've been talking about, alerts parents to the procedure affecting much more than they might have considered, and it is a much larger step to obtaining true informed consent from them. It lets them know the foreskin is more complicated than just a piece of skin, that there are risks, that it isn't medically recommended, and that research from both ends have highlighted possible good or bad effects of it, but they are still under investigation. This whole talk and the questions they may have after would take maybe 10-15 minutes, but I've never heard of a single person receiving a talk like this prior to the procedure. Making any permanent medical decision based on busted disproven science is not good for the child.
