… dedicated to creating programs and advocating for policies that help young people make informed and responsible decisions about their reproductive and sexual health. Advocates provides information, training, and strategic assistance to youth-serving organizations, policy makers, youth activists, and the media in the United States and the developing world.
Helping young people make informed and responsible decisions about their reproductive and sexual health is a noble goal. This is not that:
- Human rights—Planners must take an approach to offering male circumcision that acknowledges the human rights of the client:
- Every adult male who is considering circumcision for himself should be able to give informed consent.[1]
- Where a minor is the prospective client, counselors must take extra time to ensure that the minor and his parents understand the procedure and that the young male consents to it.[1]
- When an infant is to undergo the procedure, his parents must be fully informed.
If he is an adult, the male must consent. If he is young, the male must consent. If he is an infant, no human rights principles apply to him. That is a pathetic view of human rights. Anyone who accepts that view is not an advocate. At best, he is a propagandist who does not believe in principles, only principals who may act on another according to an undefined criterion.
What is the delimiter indicating when a male ages out of “pre-young” and into young, conferring a human rights requirement for consent before his healthy genitals may be surgically altered? I reject the answer in advance for reasons I’ve explained in detail. Still, I want to know because I do not understand the magical powers wrapped around the penis that reduces mankind’s ability to think when applying principles to its anatomical sanctity. So, advocates of the “pre-young” qualifier within human rights, when do “pre-young” males get the (ahem) equal right to consent – or refuse consent – to the surgical alteration of their healthy genitals that young and adult males possess?
Post Script: The footnote attached to the young and adult requirements points to an excuse from the usual suspects in infant male genital cutting advocacy. I will not provide a link to that report here.
Post Post Script: I addressed a similar, gender-based ethical lapse in a previous entry challenging nonsense from UNAIDS.