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[moocowmoo]

Breast enlargement surgery

At least from what little research I have done.

lol. When they're young enough to "not remember it" I hope. I can only imagine the reactions to "father requests court order for 3 year old daughter's breast enlargement".

[Owlbread]

lol. When they're young enough to "not remember it" I hope. I can only imagine the reactions to "father requests court order for 3 year old daughter's breast enlargement".

Don't worry, just give her some local anaesthetic and some Valium and she'll be fine. However unpleasant the experience might be for a while, the child would likely not remember it all within a few years.

[Leafsnail]

The mother seems to be legally in the wrong here and should maybe receive an appropriate punishment, but that doesn't mean the child should be operated on without their consent at this point.

Medicine doesn't have to treat anything.

It does, basically by definition.

I'm pretty sure children need to consent to cosmetic surgery (although this might not include reconstructive surgery).  You don't have an unlimited right to do whatever you want to your children.

By the way, the breast enlargement operations may be reconstructive as well (if, eg, the breast buds of a child were removed due to the massive breast cancer risk in their family).

[misko27]

Breast enlargement surgery

At least from what little research I have done.

Actually that seems to be the one red flag. Breast enlargement (note, not breast reduction) is specifically warned against by the FDA, though strictly speaking it isn't illegal. Anything "unreasonable" for younglings (below 13, though there is a sliding scale of grey from the youngest ages to 14, where it stops completely) might arouse the wrath of the authorities, but there's nothing specific.

There are no laws basically. Protective services are basically the only arbiters of what is and isn't reasonable enforcement-wise.

[Frumple]

Breast enlargement surgery

At least from what little research I have done.

Among other things. Insofar as cosmetic surgery goes, what I've picked up with very minimal searching is that, breast reduction surgery (for males, in particular), and both ear and nose surgery, at the least. I can only imagine there's other shenanigans involved in regards to that kind of thing.

It's just... one of those things. I'm not sure about other countries, but in the states kids (especially younger ones) really have very, very little in the way of legal rights. They've got some protections (against abuse and neglect, mostly, for all the damned good that does some days), but not too much in the way of stuff regarding consent and whatnot. If their parents want them to have a nose job, they're probably going to end up with a nose job. They're not really considered human enough to disagree, yet.

Really, Bauglir pretty much hit the nail on the head regarding this thing. A someone made a rather stupid contract and now they're stuck with it.

I'm pretty sure children need to consent to cosmetic surgery (although this might not include reconstructive surgery).  You don't have an unlimited right to do whatever you want to your children.

Some quick searching seems to say they get to consent if they're considered legally competent... which has a general rule of thumb point of being around age 14. Not 3. Otherwise it's just convincing a doctor it's in the kid's best interest. And if you've got the money to have a voluntary procedure done, you've probably got the money to hire a lawyer able to make sure they're convinced.

[Leafsnail]

Some quick searching seems to say they get to consent if they're considered legally competent... which has a general rule of thumb point of being around age 14. Not 3. Otherwise it's just convincing a doctor it's in the kid's best interest. And if you've got the money to have a voluntary procedure done, you've probably got the money to hire a lawyer able to make sure they're convinced.

If you need to get a doctor to recommend it then that means in theory you do not have the right to inflict random cosmetic surgeries on your child.  If that's not true in practice though that's horrible and it needs to change.  Basically if someone is incapable of consenting you should never assume their answer would be "yes" (ie you need to only do things that are medically in their best interests).

[RedKing]

lol. When they're young enough to "not remember it" I hope. I can only imagine the reactions to "father requests court order for 3 year old daughter's breast enlargement".

Don't worry, just give her some local anaesthetic and some Valium and she'll be fine. However unpleasant the experience might be for a while, the child would likely not remember it all within a few years.

Your mockery is appreciated, Owlie.

And my instincts were right -- this was just an excuse to start a "Circumcision is bad and you should feel bad" thread, rather than a legal discussion. I'm out.

[Owlbread]

And my instincts were right -- this was just an excuse to start a "Circumcision is bad and you should feel bad" thread, rather than a legal discussion. I'm out.

Yeah, I'm not too keen on calling for threads to be locked but we're almost in unanimous agreement that the mother can't really do much about the legal agreement and the father will be able to have the circumcision carried out regardless of a court challenge. Having established that the only thing left to debate is the morality of circumcision. If the OP wanted to have a debate about that he should have just made a thread on that particular topic, creating a thread like this seems like an obtuse way of doing it.

[moocowmoo]

Well I could have made a thread "the ethics of infant circumcision", filled it with arguments and statistics, and could expect to be abused and ridiculed for my efforts. I thought it was relevant that here we have real people, names and faces, rather than abstract arguments and the inevitable citation of endless studies.

"What the father's doing is legal so there's nothing to discuss", I guess is fair criticism, but I think it is worth looking at why what he's doing is legal. Why such a glaring exception in the law? If it's true what the others are saying, that parents can do whatever cosmetic surgeries they want to their children, then I've learned something new. That is incredibly depressing, and I have little hope that this child will be spared completely unnecessary surgery to his genitals if that is truly the case.

[misko27]

Well I could have made a thread "the ethics of infant circumcision", filled it with arguments and statistics, and could expect to be abused and ridiculed for my efforts. I thought it was relevant that here we have real people, names and faces, rather than abstract arguments and the inevitable citation of endless studies.

"What the father's doing is legal so there's nothing to discuss", I guess is fair criticism, but I think it is worth looking at why what he's doing is legal. Why such a glaring exception in the law? If it's true what the others are saying, that parents can do whatever cosmetic surgeries they want to their children, then I've learned something new. That is incredibly depressing, and I have little hope that this child will be spared completely unnecessary surgery to his genitals if that is truly the case.

Actually you probably would have gotten a lot of support here. And kaijyuu hasn't even arrived.

[Frumple]

There's no glaring exception to the law, here. There's basic contract law and that's pretty much it. A valid legal agreement was signed by both parties, and then one later on is trying to invalidate the contract. Which isn't working, and shouldn't. That the contents of the contract included cosmetic surgery is basically irrelevant, since the surgery in question isn't illegal.

As for why the surgery isn't illegal, well, that's a considerably larger discussion but most of it boils down to parents being given a lot of leeway when it comes to stuff that isn't outright systematic abuse. And a one-off procedure that's commonly and legally performed isn't that.

And no, parents couldn't do whatever cosmetic surgeries they wanted to do to their kids, but there's more than a few they can easily get by doctors if they wish, of which circumcision happens to be one. If you want to say they shouldn't be able to, well, that's fine, I wouldn't exactly disagree, but that's not how things are. And honestly, they're not likely to change any time soon. It's very difficult to regulate that sort of thing without limiting parental control to an extent the change is a political non-stater.

[moocowmoo]

Well I could have made a thread "the ethics of infant circumcision", filled it with arguments and statistics, and could expect to be abused and ridiculed for my efforts. I thought it was relevant that here we have real people, names and faces, rather than abstract arguments and the inevitable citation of endless studies.

"What the father's doing is legal so there's nothing to discuss", I guess is fair criticism, but I think it is worth looking at why what he's doing is legal. Why such a glaring exception in the law? If it's true what the others are saying, that parents can do whatever cosmetic surgeries they want to their children, then I've learned something new. That is incredibly depressing, and I have little hope that this child will be spared completely unnecessary surgery to his genitals if that is truly the case.

Actually you probably would have gotten a lot of support here. And kaijyuu hasn't even arrived.

I think it was two years ago maybe that I tried broaching this topic in a more general way. RedKing's threat "it's not gonna end well" is something that matches my imperfect memory. In particular, someone will almost always frame it as "why do you care so much about dicks and foreskins?", disregarding that what is really at issue is children's rights. But here, when we are talking about an actual boy, and his mother trying to protect him, I think it's much harder to frame talking about this as some kind of sexual deviance. It always frightens me to post on this issue, because, if you've ever seen videos of people trying to protest it, there is some extreme hostility in the United States towards those opposing child circumcision.

[moocowmoo]

There's no glaring exception to the law, here. There's basic contract law and that's pretty much it. A valid legal agreement was signed by both parties, and then one later on is trying to invalidate the contract. Which isn't working, and shouldn't. That the contents of the contract included cosmetic surgery is basically irrelevant, since the surgery in question isn't illegal.

As for why the surgery isn't illegal, well, that's a considerably larger discussion but most of it boils down to parents being given a lot of leeway when it comes to stuff that isn't outright systematic abuse. And a one-off procedure that's commonly and legally performed isn't that.

And no, parents couldn't do whatever cosmetic surgeries they wanted to do to their kids, but there's more than a few they can easily get by doctors if they wish, of which circumcision happens to be one. If you want to say they shouldn't be able to, well, that's fine, I wouldn't exactly disagree, but that's not how things are. And honestly, they're not likely to change any time soon. It's very difficult to regulate that sort of thing without limiting parental control to an extent the change is a political non-stater.

How would implementing an age of consent significantly "limit parental control"? I agree that things are unlikely to change soon in North America (though I hope this boy will get an exception somehow), but real efforts have been made in several European countries in the past few years. Interestingly enough, child circumcision was found by a judge in Germany to be bodily assault, and they actually had to pass a law to officially legalize it in the face of religious backlash. In North America most circumcision is secular, so without religion opposing human rights, what do we have over here? Only tradition, and the pretense that this is somehow medical.

[Neonivek]

tradition, religion, AND ignorance.

Which are three powerful drives.

How many states in the USA still do daylights savings time?

[DJ]

When I have a child, I'm gonna tattoo #YOLO! on it's forehead.