I had been following the Detroit FGM court case (see related posts below), and it seems the case has finally reached it's conclusion:
According to The Detroit News, the most serious remaining charge against the doctor accused of FGM has been dropped, adding the final nail in the coffin for the federal ban on FGM of 2006.
I'm disappointed, but not surprised at the results.
I knew it would end like this.
Americans would rather sacrifice the rights of baby girls on the altar of "religious freedom" rather than bring that elephant in the room, the forced genital cutting of baby boys that happens 3,000 times a day, into question.
I'm not going to comment long like I usually do.
I'm just going to close with the statements and questions I usually ask:
In any other case, reaping profit from non-medical surgery, on healthy, non-consenting individuals already constitutes medical fraud.
Without medical or clinical indication, can doctors be performing non-medical surgery on healthy, non-consenting individuals?
Much less be eliciting any kind of "decision" from parents?
How far are doctors expected to comply with "parental decisions?"
The risks of male infant circumcision include infection, partial or full ablation, hemorrhage and even death.
(Exact statistics on either male or male infant circumcision are unknown because those who perform them do not collect or report them, and governments do not require them to because they want to avoid being seen as "infringers of religious freedom.")
How is any of this conscionable given that male infant circumcision is non-medical, non-therapeutic?
Rough times lie ahead, but I am confident in that the truth cannot be hidden long.
"Do nothing secretly; for Time sees and hears all things, and discloses all." ~Sophocles
Perhaps this decision being handed down during the current coronavirus scare was strategic; people are distracted by the current pandemic.
But it doesn't matter.
"Truth suppress'd, whether by courts or crooks, will find an avenue to be told. During wartime it takes longer."--Sheila Steele
Related Posts:
enculturation-pychosis. Circumcisers are now to babies what Nazis were to Jews.
ReplyDeleteJodeph, in one of your early blog-posts you wrote about "The Circumcision Blame Game". The conclusion was that no one involved wanted to take responsability for the practise, parents claiming it is recommenden by doctors while doctors saying we do it because parents are requesting it. However today when the World is facing a Corona-crisis and governements around the world urges hospitals to put at least a temporarey ban on elective procedures in Medicine and Dentistry, US Doctors now have a chance to stop performing a procedure that they are unhappy to perform. Or is genital surgery on newborn male Babies so ingrained i American Culture and Medicine thet it will go on as usual?
ReplyDeleteThe way I see it, people circumcise, or have their children circumcised for different reasons. In the case of the parent/Dr. relationship, there is a symbiotic relationship, where parents want to have their children circumcised for cultural/social reasons (all the cool parents are doing it, it's my religion etc.), and doctors, whose intentions may or may not overlap with parents' cultural norms, have that extra incentive of financial gain.
DeleteDoctors who see no real value in male infant circumcision, but usually perform it anyway out of duty or out of being pressured at work to do them, may see the current pandemic as a good opportunity to not have to do procedures they don't see as important, or who object to do them in the first place.
I have a feeling, however, that those doctors are few and far between. I believe most doctors who circumcise have a combination of financial incentive (people hoard toilet paper, doctors rack up on cash made from quick, easy procedures), as well as cultural bias/religious conviction/self-preservation (can't let those numbers go down, gotta keep circumcision normal, gotta reassure my own circumcision status/circumcision status of my own sons, gotta protect religious circumcision if it kills me, or others) that will not let them "take a break," if you will.
Consider doctors today circumcise NICU babies in the absence of a pandemic. Mohels in NY continue to circumcise and practice Metzitzah B'peh (oral suction) even as cases of herpes rack up. "Tradition" and/or "preserving the norm" is simply that much more important.
Don't get me wrong, I want to see the silver lining in all of this, however I'm not setting my hopes too high. Given the record of recalcitrant doctors and mohels, I wouldn't hold my breath. Just as there are normal, every day people who think the current pandemic is a "hoax" continue to defy orders to stay home, there may yet be doctors and mohels persevering to carry out male infant genital mutilation in spite of this pandemic. We live in a sick, sick world.