My guess it at its core it is a question of what parents should be allowed to decide for children and upto what age.

Very much a non-trivial question.

dat wang!

There are no medical benefits of circumcision for a child and its pretty shaky ground to say there are medical benefits of circumcision for an adult but there are health risks associated with circumcision.

Banning the practice in children and allowing them to choose to be circumcised later in life makes perfect sense. What age you set that line at is an interesting one, 13 seems the logical one given the bar mitzvah but I think when you become an adult at 18 is a better time if you want to entirely move away from religious dogma in deciding.

To take this a step further...should parents be allowed to baptize (or ignite into some religion in another way) their children? There's no health risk (I guess drowning lol) but potentially a huge psychological one.

What about naming children (especially in countries where you can't change your name or can't do so without much hassle)?

Not sure I've ever seen more apt and on-point analogies. Let me mull this over. I might have to change my position.

The act of baptizing is obviously not psychologically damaging. What follows after that might be and I think we could have a discussion about it but wtf@comparing it to chopping off perfectly fine parts of a baby.

I'm not comparing them I'm asking how to draw the line. What should parents be allowed to do to children without expressed consent.

One line (usually used by Libertarians) could be "infringing on property rights the child holds to its body" but surely other lines are imaginable.

"EV calculation that yields a net benefit to the child" could be another. I mean think vaccination. One could take a (somewhat coherent) position that would concider vaccination assault as well.

What if the vaccine turns out to be harmfull in retrospect. Is it enough if parents act in good faith? Enough if they act in accordence with scientific consensus at the time of their action?

kinda funny how beating, spanking, and using violence against your children is still peaches and cream but you want to cut off a tiny piece of skin? YOU MONSTER!

let's have some consistency at least.

Is it legal for parents to tattoo their babies? Like what would happen if someone decided to tattoo a large cross onto their 7 year old's chest?

That is a much better example than baptism and it also has the bonus of being easier to reverse than circumcision.

As a follow up, assuming the parents would be prosecuted for tattooing their 7 year old baby, is that an immoral law or is society's allowance of circumcision the immoral law?

Germany has already banned those things back in 2000. Minor ones like hand spanking are fined but parents have lost their children for spanking with a belt.

Im not 100% sure if I agree with them on this but I tend to think they have the right idea.

You do understand how the two are completely different, right?

both are physical violence against another person. I wouldn't say that's completely different.

Pragmatism. /endthread

Yes, it is illegal for a parent to tattoo a baby; in fact, it is generally illegal to tattoo anyone younger than 16 for any reason.

If you google it, you will find several stories of parents being arrested for tattooing their children, although it is typically a misdemeanor.

Circumcision law is worst affront to Jews since the Holocaust
http://www.independent.co.uk/news/wo...t-7939593.html