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[scriver]

The circumcision debate is an odd one to me. I'm from the UK and it's rather rare over here so I can't really chime in xD

The debate flared up over here in Sweden recently, what with some people and doctor's/surgeons not wanting to do it, and not wanting the state health care to cover it. Personally, I can't make my mind up either way. I don't want people to do it, as I don't think parents should have that kind of say over their children's bodies (a comparison would be a parent tattooing or piercing their kids, it's not very nice), but I'm not certain it should be outlawed either because of all the health issues that would arise, as people wouldn't stop doing it just because the state said so. I'd rather it's done in a hospital by an educated surgeon.

@RedKing; You ninja'd me, but the above kinda applies to you as well. I definitely don't think surgeries should be made in synagogues, or any other non-clinical facilities. If a mohel wants to practice circumcision, he should have to open a practice. Can't have people running around cutting up other's without being able to keep an eye on them.

[RedKing]

Yeah, but the actual "wound" is small, which minimizes the chance of infection during the actual procedure. It's less dangerous than getting a tattoo, and probably on par with getting one's ears pierced. The tricky bit is that it's wrapped up in a bandage which is then placed into a diaper which (at that age) is frequently filled with lots of unhygenic material.

Like I said, most of the infection danger is going to be at home and is up to the parents to take care of. Regular cleaning with alcohol wipes and ointment.

My wife and I did a lot of research and discussion before our son was born (we purposefully didn't learn the gender beforehand, but discussed it anyways in case it was a boy). And while we understood the "He should have a say in it" aspect, there's also the fact that frankly...if you choose not to, you've chosen for him. Because it's very hard to imagine a non-masochistic 18-year old male saying "Yeah, let's go ahead and chop that off."

EDIT: But this is a great dovetail to the topic being discussed just before that -- SHOULD Jews be exempt from a hypothetical cirumcision ban? You're talking about something that is core to Jewish beliefs and identity, not just an odd custom.

[Mindmaker]

Why remove it, when it's there for a reason? It's not like hygiene is an issue nowadays.
Simply taking action, which leads the child to potentially suffer physical, sexual and psychological consequences is simply irresponsible.

I don't care, if the poll is biased. As long as there are people suffering from it, you have no right to make such a decision for them.

[MetalSlimeHunt]

Yeah, but the actual "wound" is small, which minimizes the chance of infection during the actual procedure. It's less dangerous than getting a tattoo, and probably on par with getting one's ears pierced. The tricky bit is that it's wrapped up in a bandage which is then placed into a diaper which (at that age) is frequently filled with lots of unhygenic material.

Like I said, most of the infection danger is going to be at home and is up to the parents to take care of. Regular cleaning with alcohol wipes and ointment.

Or, you could not mutilate your children's genitalia. With questionable levels of anesthetic, no less. Just saying.
If people really want circumcisions so badly, then they can get them when they're adults. But we can't have that, since we all know almost no one will have such a procedure done to them voluntarily. So they have to force it on infants who can't object. Horrible.

[Cthulhu]

Oh man, I am so glad this discussion came up.

The state of other people's penises is pretty much number one on my day to day schedule.

On a more serious note, for every study saying circumcision is good, I've seen one that says it's bad, and vice versa.  I don't wish I hadn't been circumcised, but if I hadn't been I'm sure I'd be saying the opposite. 

[Strife26]

Today on Strife explains the limits to your 1st Amendment rights, it clearly fails at a moral and legal level as it's a definite smack to Jews. Especially for a law of pretty little value like that (considering the sheer number of damaging things parents do to children), it's not an acceptable thing for teh government to do. At least it has about the same chance of surviving as this liter bottle filled with lemon-lime Gatorade.

Runs bottle over with armored truck.

Apologies for the non-tracked nature of today's show, everyone.

[Criptfeind]

Okay. I looked up some more information so's I can have a say in this. And I learned two things:

1: Helpful images are not needed. Thanks for the nightmares Wikipedia.

2: This issue is going to rely on the sliding scale thing of rights and the ability to chose the right path. Ultimately, I suppose that it is maybe not a thing that should be done. But I can really really understand those who say it should.

[G-Flex]

as I don't think parents should have that kind of say over their children's bodies

This sounds a tad silly to me. Parents have responsibility over pretty much all aspects of a child's health and development, and it's not so clear-cut that circumcision serves no legitimate function in that regard.

I can understand the argument against it, though.

[RedKing]

as I don't think parents should have that kind of say over their children's bodies

This sounds a tad silly to me. Parents have responsibility over pretty much all aspects of a child's health and development, and it's not so clear-cut that circumcision serves no legitimate function in that regard.

I can understand the argument against it, though.

Yeah, as harsh as it sounds, up until a certain age, parents pretty much have full rights over their children's bodies. Not because we're manipulative, power-hungry bastards. Not because we think of them as "property". It's because they're not in a state to be able to make that decision for themselves. My daughter had her eyes operated on at the age of 2, to correct a vision problem that would have left her walleyed and quite possibly result in blindness in one eye over time. I'm not going to wait for her to be old enough to make the decision if she wants a painful (and frankly terrifying to her, when she came out of the anesthesia) surgery, because by then it's too late. We don't consult with her in determining how to schedule her vaccinations. We have friends who had twin micro-preemie babies, one of whom had serious complications and they had to make the excruciating decision to surgically remove part of his intestine and the lens out of one eye. A foreskin is a pretty minor thing compared to that. They had to make an even more excruciating decision with their first child: the decision to make him a DNR (Do Not Resuscitate) when his terminal genetic disorder finally got bad enough that he was basically nearly dying multiple times a day.

Parents have to make a LOT of decisions over their children's bodies, and the good ones don't make those decisions lightly.

[G-Flex]

Yeah, as harsh as it sounds, up until a certain age, parents pretty much full rights over their children's bodies. Not because we're manipulative, power-hungry bastards. Not because we think of them as "property". It's because they're not in a state to be able to make that decision for themselves. My daughter had her eyes operated on at the age of 2, to correct a vision problem that would have left her walleyed and quite possibly result in blindness in one eye over time. I'm not going to wait for her to be old enough to make the decision if she wants a painful (and frankly terrifying to her, when she came out of the anesthesia) surgery, because by then it's too late. We don't consult with her in determining how to schedule her vaccinations. We have friends who had twin micro-preemie babies, one of whom had serious complications and they had to make the excruciating decision to surgically remove part of his intestine and the lens out of one eye. A foreskin is a pretty minor thing compared to that. They had to make an even more excruciating decision with their first child: the decision to make him a DNR (Do Not Resuscitate) when his terminal genetic disorder finally got bad enough that he was basically nearly dying multiple times a day.

Parents have to make a LOT of decisions over their children's bodies, and the good ones don't make those decisions lightly.

To be fair though, we also don't/shouldn't allow blatant, useless mutilation. Whether circumcision falls under that category is pretty much the debate, I think.

[freeformschooler]

as I don't think parents should have that kind of say over their children's bodies

This sounds a tad silly to me. Parents have responsibility over pretty much all aspects of a child's health and development, and it's not so clear-cut that circumcision serves no legitimate function in that regard.

I can understand the argument against it, though.

Yeah, it's a bit similar, nowadays, to cutting the cord off a newborn, except that it's opt-out and not a requirement, and choosing to opt out won't necessarily have any negative effects on the child. I haven't heard much evidence against circumcision, but I haven't personally heard of it actually improving anything either. If everyone in the country that was having a kid suddenly decided to opt out of circumcision, then sure, but I think we should have the option available.

Parents have to make a LOT of decisions over their children's bodies, and the good ones don't make those decisions lightly.

This is the biggest thing though. Parents have to make those decisions, because it's outside of their child's hands. However, if they make the wrong decision, the child could suffer. For instance, when I was much younger, I had the longest strings of "harmless" vaccinations in my entire life. I'm not sure if they were opt-out or not, though, but I'm pretty sure they weren't. Directly after that, I had strep to the brain, and we found out when I went to the neurologist's office that it was very probable that the vaccinations caused it. For the next few weeks, I had to be under intensive care for all sorts of horrid mental and physical conditions, and the whole ordeal left me with a couple lasting disorders that I've had to live with for my entire life. Whether or not the vaccinations improved anything or caused all this, I still think that because of it, at a very young age a child's health should be in their parents' hands. If something bad happens due to a parent's, it's on the parents for their decisions. If the child is saved or improved due to a parent's, it's also on the parent's head. I think the best thing a parent can do at that point in their life is think of the child's health, and stay informed about every decision they make.

[Mindmaker]

@RedKing:
The comparison is a bit lacking.
One is a vital intervention, to ensure the well being and full functionality of a child, while the other one isn't.

How would you react, if one of your children had to deal with one of the issues in the link I provided in my previous post, because of a procedure, which wasn't necessary at all?

[freeformschooler]

How would you react, if one of your children had to deal with one of the issues in the link I provided in my previous post, because of a procedure, which wasn't necessary at all?

I don't know about him but I'd act the same way I would if one of my kids went through the same thing I did as a kid: surprised and horrified. Surprised because good god most people get vaccines at a young age, same way most citizens get circumcisions at birth. Horrified because the blood was both on my hands and not on my hands, and I was one of the unlucky ones.

There is literally no way to tell if you're going to be one of the unlucky ones. On one hand, you could give your kid a circumcision, a useless procedure, and be one of the extremely unlucky ones. On the other hand, you could not do it, and have him have to endure mocking every time he went in a men's changing room, as one of my uncircumcised friends told me happens in some places in the US.

Also, I wonder if we scared Vector away.

[scriver]

Parents have the right and responsibility to make decisions for and about their children, yes. But they do not have supreme right to do whatever they wish to said children, as the children have rights as well and are not appendages or property of their parents. Unrepairable plastic surgery that the children will have to live with for the rest of their lives is one thing parents should not be allowed to decide before the kid is old enough to agree. It's the same with tattoos and piercings. Ritualistic facial scarring as well. I would never approve of any of them. It's just excersising power over individuals that the parents should not have.

[RedKing]

We considered those issues before making the decision. That one study is...shall we say, not exactly from a neutral medical provider. There are counter studies that say there's no effect at all, and yet others that having a foreskin leads to increased infections. The truth is probably somewhere in the middle. In this case, we're playing the probabilities. There are well over a hundred million circumcised adult males in the US population. If any of these problems occurred in any statistically signficant percentage, I feel that the medical community would know that.


Hell, this gets at the mortal fear of every parent: That we're going to do something (through action or inaction) that permanently damages our child. This is why you have some parents who shelter their kids from *everything* (which is just as damaging, IMHO). My wife let our daugher pay in a mountain creek when she was maybe 6 months old, and she wound up with a short-term case of ringworm. No long-term harm, cleared up with some antifungals, but my wife was devastated. I was in China at the time, and she felt as if she'd just let her infant child crawl out onto a busy highway.

All a parent can do is look at the available literature, and make their own determinations as to what's risky and what's the best course of action. And what this bill would do is usurp that right and force all parents into making the same choice that somebody (in this case, not a medical professional but the author of a comic book called "Foreskin Man" with serious anti-Semitic overtones) made for them.


@freeformschooler: Yeah, I think this needs to end or be split into a seperate thread, before this becomes "the Wang Angst Thread"