Circumcision and the rights of baby boys

Yes. Removing healthy parts from a child’s sex organ violates fundamental rights. It needs to be an individual choice, not a parental option.

Yes.

The Australian Medical Association is currently talking about *banning* most non-religious circumcision. Most of their doctors are either circumcised themselves or married to circumcised men, but this is what they say in the summary statement of the paediatric policy on circumcision of the Royal Australasian College of Physicians:
“After extensive review of the literature the RACP reaffirms that there is no medical indication for routine neonatal circumcision.” (those last 9 words are in bold on their website).

The recent drive to promote circumcision in Africa has very little to do with HIV, and a lot to do with trying to justify circumcision. HIV doesn’t strike people at random, and any diversion from ABC (Abstinence, Being Faithful, Condoms) will cost yet more African lives. It’s ludicrous to suggest that men who’ve had the most sensitive parts of their penis cut off and told that it will protect them against HIV won’t have more unsafe sex. One study was also showing that circumcised HIV+ men are more than twice as likely to infect their wives as intact HIV+ men.

Female circumcision seems to have a protective effect against HIV (google “Stallings Tanzania”), but everyone seems very keen to keep that quiet. Most forms of female circumcision do not involve removal of the clitoris and in fact remove fewer nerve endings than male circumcision.

At the very least, you’d think we could make it illegal to sell (or transfer for profit) the amputated tissue without disclosing the arrangement to the victim and his family.

Amputated foreskin is used in medical research and cosmetics and big pharma labs pay hospitals and doctors huge piles of cash for involuntarily vivisected human body parts.