Should circumcision be illegal?

B_FapTheRipper

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its the year 2013 and its still practiced. im not even Jewish and im circumcised and very resentful about it. to know we are ALL born uncut and then to find out later in life that part of your penis was cut?? wow how is that still practiced today? how could anyone possible agree with it? i wish i was given up for adoption just for the mere fact that i wouldnt have been cut. i love my penis but to know it could have been bigger really disturbs me.
 

D_Anne_T_Freeze

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I don't know about the "could have been bigger" part. I wasn't aware that cutting made it smaller. I may have to research that a bit. However in answer to your question, i don't think parents should circumcise their children without their consent. I think people should be able to grow up and choose if they want a harmless piece of their body removed. On the flip side, i know men who have foreskins that are too tight and just too scared to go in and get something done about it. Maybe that's why parents do it coz they know that men rarely get anything done to their dicks, even when it's causing them pain.
 

gymfresh

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Specifically illegal? Probably not. Circumcision has a long history as a medical intervention to address certain conditions. But it should not be "optional" or "elective" until the person has reached adulthood.

Male and female circumcision ought to have to meet the same criteria as all other invasive surgeries: diagnosis, examination of alternatives, standardised criteria for what is identified and removed, appropriate anaesthesia, performance by a licensed physician, tissue pathology to confirm diagnosis, and follow-on care.

Even as a medical intervention, circumcision is substantially overused when equally effective and less drastic solutions are available, probably in part because of its history of falling outside the parameters of surgical standards.

Circumcision as a bod mod is an entirely different issue. Adults can get their glans split, sleeve tattoo both arms, and have horns attached to their skulls. But a fundamental aspect of parenting and good medical care is to get individuals to that point in their lives with as much of their body intact and unmarred as practical.

The arguments "it hardly kills anyone" and "I like it better" are never valid reasons for removing part of another person's organs. Nor are prospective health suppositions.

Sorry for your resentment, FTR. But adoption probably wouldn't have been your solution. Many, if not most, adoption programs in North America routinely had boys circumcised that came into their care. Probably some still do; even if they don't, it's still one of the first things many families arrange after they adopt. A friend of mine was instrumental in getting the Latter Day Saints (Mormon) adoption service to cease their policy of circumcising every male ward in the program before being placed with a family. The policy ran from about 1950 to 2000.

There will never be such a thing as a "ban" on circumcision as long as it remains a medical option when needed. But better regulation and scrutiny within civil, criminal and constitutional laws? You can count on it.
 

Hoss

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its the year 2013 and its still practiced. im not even Jewish and im circumcised and very resentful about it. to know we are ALL born uncut and then to find out later in life that part of your penis was cut?? wow how is that still practiced today? how could anyone possible agree with it?
It's somewhat difficult to really know why the RIC is still done. Facts are it started happening and then some medical professionals decided it had some sort of benefit. Yes there are also some risks. Some major risks of having a circumcision. Of course there are also some risks of keeping the skin. In the end I think they may balance out on the risk either way so why take it off? That's something the medical community is still debating......and likely always will be.

You should look at the positive side of things. With the internet more people are able to learn all about circumcision these days and make informed decisions instead of just going along with what a doctor suggests being done. Circumcision rates are dropping in most of the U.S.

i wish i was given up for adoption just for the mere fact that i wouldnt have been cut.
You don't know that you wouldn't have been circumcised. a nice Jewish couple could have snatched you up for adoption and had your foreskin removed. A Christian couple might have. An atheist couple might have. A man or woman doing the single parent adoption might have had you circumcised. Adoption doesn't mean a circumcision won't occur.

i love my penis but to know it could have been bigger really disturbs me.
You have no proof of this. There has been no legitimate evidence that not being circumcised makes a penis bigger. I mean the penis itself not the relatively thin foreskin. There are circumcised men who are quite large, well above average. There are uncircumcised men who are quite small, so small that when you see them naked it's just a bit of foreskin on the outside and no filling.



You seem like an ideal candidate to enter this discussion: http://www.lpsg.com/199567-why-are-people-so-angry.html
 

B_FapTheRipper

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well how could it not be bigger, its more mass and volume. if you got your neck cut and sewed up as a child, do you think you'd reach your full height potential. of course not becuase the stitching has stubbed some growth.
 

slurper_la

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... i love my penis but to know it could have been bigger really disturbs me.

well how could it not be bigger, its more mass and volume. if you got your neck cut and sewed up as a child, do you think you'd reach your full height potential. of course not becuase the stitching has stubbed some growth.

OMG!!!

OMG!!!

I'm starting to like the idea of testing people before they are allowed to vote
 

tgirlsrgreat

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its the year 2013 and its still practiced. im not even Jewish and im circumcised and very resentful about it. to know we are ALL born uncut and then to find out later in life that part of your penis was cut?? wow how is that still practiced today? how could anyone possible agree with it? i wish i was given up for adoption just for the mere fact that i wouldnt have been cut. i love my penis but to know it could have been bigger really disturbs me.
no to the first, and don't be so gullible on the second
 
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Jason

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The position in the UK is that non-medical circumcision is not carried out by the NHS. This means parents must pay and must also find a doctor and clinic prepared to carry out the procedure. These are both real obstacles within the UK system. The BMA (British Medical Association) very strongly discourages non-medical circumcision. At the moment circumcision in the UK is not illegal, but in a few years we can expect a case to be made in the courts - I think the delay is that the relevant guidelines discouraging circumcision were brought in less than eighteen years ago. A case could be brought against parents and also against individual doctors and clinics.

I think we will soon be in a position in the UK when male circumcision will become illegal with a few medical and perhaps religious exceptions.

Reading of the upset that the matter has clearly caused the OP seems to demonstrate the need for it to be illegal.
 
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D_Anne_T_Freeze

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well how could it not be bigger, its more mass and volume. if you got your neck cut and sewed up as a child, do you think you'd reach your full height potential. of course not becuase the stitching has stubbed some growth.

I don't think that analogy works. They don't cut your foreskin then stitch it over the top of your dick. And your dick doesn't stop growing because it's turtle neck has been pulled back and cut.
 

tbrguy

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Specifically illegal? Probably not. Circumcision has a long history as a medical intervention to address certain conditions. But it should not be "optional" or "elective" until the person has reached adulthood.

Male and female circumcision ought to have to meet the same criteria as all other invasive surgeries: diagnosis, examination of alternatives, standardised criteria for what is identified and removed, appropriate anaesthesia, performance by a licensed physician, tissue pathology to confirm diagnosis, and follow-on care.

Even as a medical intervention, circumcision is substantially overused when equally effective and less drastic solutions are available, probably in part because of its history of falling outside the parameters of surgical standards.

Circumcision as a bod mod is an entirely different issue. Adults can get their glans split, sleeve tattoo both arms, and have horns attached to their skulls. But a fundamental aspect of parenting and good medical care is to get individuals to that point in their lives with as much of their body intact and unmarred as practical.

The arguments "it hardly kills anyone" and "I like it better" are never valid reasons for removing part of another person's organs. Nor are prospective health suppositions.

Sorry for your resentment, FTR. But adoption probably wouldn't have been your solution. Many, if not most, adoption programs in North America routinely had boys circumcised that came into their care. Probably some still do; even if they don't, it's still one of the first things many families arrange after they adopt. A friend of mine was instrumental in getting the Latter Day Saints (Mormon) adoption service to cease their policy of circumcising every male ward in the program before being placed with a family. The policy ran from about 1950 to 2000.

There will never be such a thing as a "ban" on circumcision as long as it remains a medical option when needed. But better regulation and scrutiny within civil, criminal and constitutional laws? You can count on it.


I don't think there's a better answer than this.
 

redneckgymrat

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Typical liberal. The solution to any perceived problem is to involve the government. *You* don't like something? Heaven forbid that you should take responsibility...the *government* should address it for you.

If it's a problem at all, it's cultural, not legal. I could see not encouraging circumcision, since it no longer aids in hygiene. But to make it illegal is a ridiculous overreaction.

Let's try something. Replace the word circumcision with abortion, and see how you like your same argument.

Personally? I don't like abortion. I consider it to be the murder of an unborn child. But, do I want it make *illegal?* No.

Abortion is a valid medical procedure that is occasionally necessary. Though I feel that it is being overused, and I believe it to be ethically and morally offensive, abortion *does* serve a valid purpose.

Circumcision is also a valid medical procedure.
 

blazblue

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Being that the OP is more worried about his "size" than the morals/ethics/politics behind circumcision, I don't even know why this is even worth discussing. This thread should at least be moved to the Etc Etc. section or something.
 

gymfresh

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Typical liberal. The solution to any perceived problem is to involve the government.

There's a flip side to getting the government involved, one that you may approve of.

Very few US parents have paid directly for their infant's circumcision for the past 65 years or so. It's either covered under the family's health insurance plan, included in their HMO, or paid for by the government. The last one is a biggie -- currently about 40% of all newborn circumcisions in the US are done under Medicaid, up from about 28% a decade ago. Thus, circumcision is easy money for the medical profession and just about invisible to the parents. Someone else handles the bill and they get handed a baby already "fixed".

I'm sure some well-intentioned individuals decided to make routine circumcision just about the only exception to Medicaid's "necessity" mandate, but it's consumed hundreds of millions of taxpayer dollars since about the time I was born. The free market's a wonderful thing in some areas, but health care isn't always one of them. However, in this case the market isn't even allowed to work on the issue because supply and demand are distorted by subsidies and artificial incentives.

On the one hand are many who say infant circumcision is a "personal" issue (though who the "person" is here is sometimes misunderstood) or that it is a health issue, despite no study ever showing cut boys grow up healthier than intact boys. In reality, US circumcision has been primarily an economic issue and secondarily a sociologic issue. Evidence abounds that when parents bear the full cost of the surgery, the rate of election plummets. Ditto when the locker room argument diminishes, as it has started to do in this day of no more public showers and widespread neurosis about nudity.

The US went freaky for circumcision in the Cold War era when people envisioned clean-cut American boys (and Commonwealth boys from proper families) vs uncircumcised socialists and communists. The US identified dozens of spies by circumcision status and the ongoing enthusiasm for the procedure spawned numerous health beliefs to back up what was already happening, and has left traces still today. Medicaid started in the mid-60s when Cold War sentiment was still high, and this may have also justified all states immediately covering routine circumcision of male infants. It certainly wasn't the medical profession; the American Academy of Pediatrics first pronouncement on the subject in 1971 said unmistakably that there were no valid medical indications for circumcision in the neonatal period.

Now the world's turned on its head, you can't identify an ally by his circumcision status and the whole issue's getting reëxamined. Americans don't take well to directed change, and rightly so. Everywhere else this fad has been allowed to lapse on its own through attrition when the economics of universal health coverage no longer supported circumcision's mass application. In effect, for many decades in the US we've all been paying to keep the circumcision machine going, whether through our insurance premiums, our tax dollars, or both.

Uncle Sam needs to get out of the business of paying to have healthy, normal infants circumcised. That's the "turning to the government" that I endorse. Increasing evidence suggests that in jurisdictions that drop IMC coverage (California first in 1982, now 18 states) private insurance and HMO plans follow suit. Last year Medicaid spent over $100 million of federal and state funds to circumcise 400,000 perfectly healthy baby boys and to treat complications therefrom. The history of getting into this mess is increasingly clear; getting out of it is the question. Personally, I don't think far-reaching legislation is particularly effective at smoothly achieving that goal. As an economist, I'd rather see the issue in its unsubsidized economic state and then decide whether there's still something to deal with.

its the year 2013 and its still practiced. im not even Jewish and im circumcised and very resentful about it.

i love my penis but to know it could have been bigger really disturbs me.

At least one study, by a condom manufacturer, showed that intact men had longer penises on average. And I've definitely seem some sausages that looked like they wanted to burst out of the constraints of their cut skin, and plenty that could only achieve a comfortable erection by pulling up scrotal tissue. But you don't really know whether your particular circumcision changed your size parameters.

Anyway, there are lots of ways of getting involved to change the status quo if you don't like it. Google it. Want to make a big difference? Work to ensure Obamacare doesn't automatically cover it.