Congratulations on the birth of your son! Are you planning to have his foreskin removed? If you think that’s none of our business, then be glad you don’t live in San Francisco, where the question of whether to circumcise a baby boy — long a matter between you and your doctor, or you and your God — may soon be decided by majority rule.
In November, San Francisco voters will decide whether to ban the circumcision of males under 18, even for religious reasons, within the city limits. The MGM bill — it stands for “male genital mutilation” — would criminalize an elective procedure performed roughly 1 million times last year in U.S. hospitals.
Its supporters, who call themselves “intactivists,” say removing an infant’s foreskin is painful and unnecessary and can have lasting physical and emotional effects. The benefits — slightly lower risk of urinary tract infections, penile cancer and sexually transmitted disease, according to the Mayo Clinic — can be achieved through proper hygiene and education about safe sex, they say.
Snipping the foreskin of infant boys fulfills a religious covenant for Jews and Muslims. For others there are pros and cons to consider, but they’re small enough that the medical establishment considers the decision a tossup.
Surgical circumcision in the U.S. became routine in the 20th century. Removing the folds of skin makes it easier to keep things clean, which is no small consideration once you’ve entrusted the job to an 8-year-old with a bar of soap. But hygienic lapses are far less trouble now that antibiotics are widely available.
Today, close to half of parents say the decision to circumcise was based at least in part on a belief that the boy should look like Dad, or like the other kids in the seventh-grade locker room. But those concerns probably wouldn’t carry the day if parents believed the procedure was risky.
The experts aren’t taking sides. The American Academy of Pediatrics says the evidence of potential medical benefits isn’t strong enough to justify recommending routine circumcision, but it won’t come out against it, either. Religious and cultural traditions are legitimate considerations, the AAP says. Its bottom line, backed by the Mayo Clinic and the American Medical Association, is that parents should be given “accurate and unbiased information” and make the decision themselves. That sounds right to us.
In fact, the rate of circumcision has been falling for decades. Two out of three boys born in hospitals were circumcised in the 1980s and 1990s, but only about one in three were in 2009, according to a study done for the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention. This has happened without the government sticking its nose in anybody’s diaper.
But some intactivists say infant circumcision is far more harmful than the experts believe. It interrupts maternal bonding, stamps violence into a baby boy’s psyche and leaves him traumatized for life, they say. We won’t ponder what that suggests about the current crop of adult men, most of whom were circumcised. But we can’t help wondering about the formative experiences of Matthew Hess, who wrote the San Francisco ballot measure and others like it around the country.
Hess also is the author of an online graphic novel featuring a blond hero named Foreskin Man who battles a scalpel-wielding villain named Monster Mohel. (A mohel performs traditional Jewish circumcisions.) Hess’ creation, widely publicized in recent weeks, stoked the belief that intactivists aren’t just well-meaning busybodies but anti-Semites and killed attempts to get a circumcision ban on the ballot in Santa Monica, Calif.
The woman behind that effort, who runs a website called wholebabyrevolution.com, says she’ll focus instead on education. That’s more like it. If parents can’t be trusted to decide something as simple as whether to have their baby circumcised, they probably shouldn’t be allowed to take him home from the hospital.
