Category: Circumcision

What An Interesting Idea.

The Oregon Supreme Court announced its decision in Boldt and Boldt. I’m currently reading it, not that I can specifically offer anything in the way of legal analysis. But the conclusion is stunning from the perspective of individual rights.

We remand the case to the trial court with instructions to resolve the factual issue whether M agrees or objects to the circumcision.

“M” is the 12-year-old boy in the case. His foreskin, his opinion? What an original idea.

More later.

Update: Andrew Sullivan reaches the same basic conclusion.

I will have an opinion.

From Oregon:

A divorce dispute over whether to circumcise a 12-year-old boy will be decided Friday by the Oregon Supreme Court.

The nationally-watched case pits a father who converted to Judaism and wants his son to undergo the religious ritual, against his mother, an orthodox Christian who claims the boy doesn’t want to be circumcised.

I’ve written about this in many posts already. I’m curious to discover whether or not the Oregon Supreme Court understands the fallacy of the Circuit judge’s opinion that “the decision of whether or not a child has elective surgery, which this appears to be, is a call that should be made and is reserved to the custodial parent”. Elective surgery is a very large scope. It would certainly be legally strange to continue the irrational stance of applying one standard to the penis and another to the labia and clitoris. But then, Oregon already embraces gender discrimination in its law against the mutilation of a minor’s genitals.

I hope we get a broad precedent-setting ruling protecting males as females are already protected, but I’m not stupid. I am pessimistically cautious that we’ll get a ruling in favor of the mother’s argument. Hopefully the court will have the sense to at least go there, custodial parents “rights” be damned. More tomorrow, after the Court announces its ruling.

Update: My opinion is here.

Half of Newborn Americans Face Gender-based Discrimination

What’s wrong with the title of this news story reporting on infant circumcision rates in the United States?

Half Of Newborn Americans Undergo Circumcision

That is not true because we discriminate against children based on gender. Half of newborn Americans are protected – by federal law – from needless cutting on their healthy genitals. Among the other half of newborn Americans (i.e. males), slightly more than half of them have their healthy genitals surgically reduced for non-medical reasons. The other half of unprotected newborn American males are still subject to their parents’ whim regarding circumcision, as if cosmetic surgery is a legitimate decision belonging to parents.

Panicking exposes an ethical flaw.

This is the predictable near-end-result of embracing the irrational.

Rwanda has launched a campaign to encourage all men to be circumcised, to reduce the risk of catching HIV/Aids.

Digging a little deeper, according to Innocent Nyaruhirira, secretary of state for Aids prevention, the truth:

“We will start this campaign with the new born and young men in universities, the army and police.”

Circumcision as an HIV prevention strategy is absurd when condoms and safe-sex are still necessary, but one target group is not like the others. Forcing circumcision on a child is a bizarre definition of encourage.

I will not pretend to be shocked. Even when leaving aside the glaring ethical violation of cutting the healthy genitals of a child, scarce medical resources will be used to circumcise those who will not be sexually active for a dozen or more years. Brilliant strategy.

But consider a few statistics. In 2000, 11% of Rwandan adults were HIV-positive. Over a period of years, traditional approaches to HIV prevention were implemented. In 2007, 3% of Rwandan adults were HIV-positive. Other than the obviously unfortunate reality that many HIV-positive adults have died in that period, the non-circumcision approach works. Why must those who will grow up to be responsible be judged irresponsible before they’ve had a chance to prove themselves? Why must they pay the price for a flaw they may not possess?

Coerced “protection” is morally inferior to the consequences of individual action, whatever the actual consequence.

WHO doesn’t understand the definition of “healthy”.

In an article in the New York Times on female genital cutting in Indonesia, here’s the obligatory mention. I’m only surprised that it appears so late in the story.

Any distinction between injuring the clitoris or the clitoral hood is irrelevant, says Laura Guarenti, an obstetrician and WHO’s medical officer for child and maternal health in Jakarta. “The fact is there is absolutely no medical value in circumcising girls,” she says. “It is 100 percent the wrong thing to be doing.” The circumcision of boys, she adds, has demonstrated health benefits, namely reduced risk of infection and some protection against H.I.V.

How much of “absolutely no medical value” is the result of scientific research finding no link between female genital cutting and potential health benefits? How much is the result of our realization that it would be cruel to investigate it, even on willing adult volunteers, with the forward-thinking realization that it would be cruel to impose on children, regardless of anything potential?

For many people, the history of male genital cutting precludes any reconsideration of the ethics and validity of imposing an extreme intervention on a healthy child (i.e. a human being). The surgery is wrapped up in tradition and “medical” justifications that society uses to pretend that an objective clinical finding is not merely a subjective wish when applied beyond the laboratory. That blindness is especially silly when looking at the disparity between volunteers in a study and infants with healthy genitals. Unfortunately, within that disparity rests the real issue of the individual and his/her inherent, identifiable rights. Those human rights are not predicated upon the claimed grandiosity of an action’s outcome. Nor are they predicated upon the gender of the person subjected to such irrational hope.

Healthy genitals, by definition, do not require intervention. As such, any intervention is excessive, unjustified, and thus, irrational. Healthy (i.e. medical need, or lack thereof) is the only reasonable standard needed to evaluate medical procedures when applied to a person who cannot exercise his own consent. Mounds of historical research are as irrelevant as any distinction based on gender.

As an informative aside, peruse the accompanying slideshow of an Indonesian circumcision ceremony (particularly this one). Try to justify how changing the gender of the participants – willing or otherwise – matters. Essentially, any time you see pink in a picture, change it to blue. Doing so demonstrates how arguing a difference based on subjective criteria imposed on non-consenting “participants” is a stupid mental exercise. Or, rather, I should say it’s a mental exercise by the stupid.

Analysis reveals more than snark reveals.

From the Los Angeles Times article referenced by Wonkette, this:

Kenya’s violence is on one level political, reflecting the rivalry for control between President Mwai Kibaki, a Kikuyu, and opposition candidate Raila Odinga, a Luo. In the election campaign, the fact that Odinga was uncircumcised became an issue: He was seen by some Kikuyus as a “child” unfit to rule because he had not passed through circumcision and initiation.
…

“They say that those who are circumcised are wiser than the uncircumcised ones,” said John Lallo, 62, of Kibera. “They do it [forcibly circumcise] to teach us to be circumcised so that we can be wise like them.”

The extreme difference in how this discussion is carried out in the United States versus how it’s being carried out by some in Kenya is undeniable.

It is also undeniable that many Americans perpetuate the same type of myth that circumcised males are better than intact males by virtue of nothing more than a stolen foreskin. Circumcised males, parents, doctors, medical organizations, and political organizations all believe this nonsense because it conforms to their subjective preference. They peddle their nonsense in visible contradiction to both evidence and reason, through force, to males who will probably never need or want circumcision.

“Women won’t sleep with him.” “He’ll get HIV.” “He’ll have to deal with smegma¹.” “He’ll be less wise.” The anti-intellectual nature of using such subjective claims to force genital cutting onto a healthy individual should be obvious to a society that views itself as an advanced world leader. Instead, we embrace superstitions. We violate our most basic principles in the process.

We are mistaken in our thinking and actions, despite our high opinion of our collective intelligence. No amount of wishful dreaming can make intention significant in the presence of outcome.

¹ Female genitals produce smegma, too. We don’t cut them as a solution.

As long as they disagree, a smear is reasonable?

Following on my entry on forced circumcisions in Kenya, I remember that I don’t read Wonkette any more for a reason. Wit requires intelligence. Instead, Wonkette’s writers have decided that mockery without thought makes for better copy. No thanks.

In the comments to that entry, this damning attack:

Let’s see what our homegrown anti-circumcision fanatics do with this item.

In a context where criminals are forcibly circumcising men and boys to leave a preferred ethnic tribal mark, those who oppose such violence are fanatics. Because we see rationally understand that there is no difference in outcome whether it’s imposed (without need) as an attack or it’s imposed without need as a well-intentioned gesture by parents, we’re fanatics. Because we believe in applying individual rights to every person that can’t be violated by a stranger or a relative, we’re fanatics. Because we believe each male (and female) should decide for himself (herself) what should or should not be done to his (her) genitals, even if it means he (she) ultimately chooses genital cutting, we’re fanatics.

In response to multiple comments in the same thread, there is not a focus on every female genital mutilation or rape that occurs every day because every one in the civilized world understands that they’re both obscenely wrong. Those of us who are fanatics simply refuse to accept the discriminatory lack of thought that views gender as a valid dividing line for determining if an act is a violation of the individual. Few people will argue that the rape of a male is acceptable, but a majority mistakenly pretend that it’s acceptable to cut the genitals of males, whether or not he needs or wants his genitals cut. Somehow, age and relationship are deemed criteria for applying basic human rights to the individual male.

I’m not the fanatic.

Two News Items

First:

The number of such assaults so far appears small. The hospital here in Limuru, 30 miles west of Nairobi, confirmed that two cases of forced circumcision were admitted after Sunday’s violence that saw members of the larger Kikuyu tribe evict hundreds of Luos from their homes. One case involved an adult, the other a 4-month-old.
…

The attack on the 4-month-old baby in Limuru occurred as his 14-year-old cousin was carrying him on her back through the forest, according to a hospital spokeswoman. The teen was raped and the child circumcised. His wound later became infected.

One attack involved sexual violence, and the other involved sexual violence.

Second:

WILLY Mafabi, a paraffin vendor in Malaba town, ran out of luck on January 3, when his tribesmen forcefully circumcised him.

According to his kinsmen, Mafabi, who hails from Bubulo county in Manafwa district, had been fleeing to Malaba whenever the circumcision season approached.

On the fateful day, his tribesmen rounded him up at Malaba Taxi Park, tied him and quickly sprinkled cassava flour allover his body. They forced him to carry two heavy stones as they marched him on the streets of Malaba, singing traditional Kigisu circumcision songs.

He was later circumcised at Akolodongo ward in the outskirts of Malaba town.

Does cultural expectation excuse the forced violation of the individual’s inherent rights? Should his age or blood relationship to his circumcisers affect the answer?

The public knows best. It doesn’t need facts.

I don’t support the death penalty. I think it’s immoral, but I also do not believe that any government process is capable of 100% certainty in its justice system. The possibility of executing one innocent individual more than outweighs any alleged benefit from using capital punishment. I’m uninterested in utilitarian claims about the value of individual rights.

It’s clear that many death penalty advocates value it for its ability to achieve retribution. People we execute are barbarians who deserve it. When made honestly, I can appreciate that sentiment even though I’m not willing to be a barbarian myself. I’m only bothered when advocates pretend that state-sanctioned murder is not barbaric.

The current case before the Supreme Court, Baze v. Rees, is the perfect example of this. From the New York Times:

When the Supreme Court hears arguments on Monday in Baze v. Rees, the Kentucky case that has led to a de facto national moratorium on executions, it will mostly be concerned with the question of what standard courts must use to assess the constitutionality of execution methods under the Eighth Amendment, which bars cruel and unusual punishment.

But beyond that is the more practical question of why all 36 states that use lethal injections to execute condemned inmates are wedded to a cumbersome combination of three chemicals.

The answer, experts say, seems to be that no state wants to make the first move. Having proceeded in lock step to adopt the current method, which was chosen in part because it differed from the one used on animals and masked the involuntary movements associated with death, state governments would prefer that someone else, possibly the courts, change the formula first.

Self-denial is very powerful. As long as we appear to treat people better – by treating them differently – than animals, nothing terrible is happening. As long as we don’t see involuntary movements, nothing terrible is happening. We’re being compassionate for barbarians who deserve nothing good from us. I can’t be excited by this because it’s dishonest.

I like this better:

“The departments of correction are dug in,” said Deborah W. Denno, an authority on methods of execution at the Fordham University Law School. “There’s safety in numbers. But if one state breaks from that, the safety in numbers starts to crumble.”

“If you change,” Professor Denno continued, “you’re admitting there was something wrong with the prior method. All those people you were executing, you could have been doing it in a better, more humane way.”
…

Some experts on executions say the debate over which chemicals to use is the wrong one. States have adopted a process that appears humane because it looks like medical treatment, Professor Denno said. But looks can be deceiving, she added.

“To me,” Professor Denno said, “the firing squad is the most humane and perceived to be the most brutal.”

If we’re going to have capital punishment, we need to remember that the Constitutional protection against cruel and unusual punishment protects the individual right of the accused/convicted. It does not protect the accuser from having to feel bad. And as long as innocents may be condemned, which they will, we must follow principles, not fantasies of that vengeance can achieve for the victims of heinous crimes.

**********

On a tangent, to what else might we reasonably apply Professor Denno’s logic? If you change, you admit there was something wrong with what was done in the past? A process that appears humane because it looks like medical treatment? The human mind is very good at self-denial, but apparently quite unimaginative at wrapping it in unique packages.

Proxy consent is a valid concept, in the proper context.

I’ll leave the libertarian angle of this story to others, Radley Balko among them because that’s where I found it first. I have a different analysis to make.

An armed law enforcement team broke down the door of a family home with a battering ram and took an 11-year-old to a hospital after authorities feared he was not getting proper medical care for what turned out to be a minor head injury.
…

Jon’s father, Tom Shiflett, 62, told paramedics he didn’t want them to treat Jon and asked them to leave. He told them he had served as a medic in Vietnam and he had the skill to treat his son.
…

Following the raid, a doctor recommended Jon be given fluids, Tylenol and ice to treat the bruises, according to a copy of the child’s patient aftercare instructions.

This is an example of where proxy consent for parents is appropriate. This is the determination of medical need, based on actual evidence to suggest that injury might exist. It is logical to determine whether or not intervention is necessary. Contrary to other decisions we incorrectly permit.