A state court in Germany has recently ruled that circumcizion is assault against the child and both parents and the doctor who does it can be held responsible.

The German medical professions union has recommended doctors to stop performing the surgery.

Muslims and Jews are ready to appeal to the highest courts (way to unite them heh), federal and EU are the two left I think, IANAL.

I've gotta admit that I have never even thought about this before. I feel like it is indeed assault from my Libertarian standpoint. I also think that outlawing it will not stop it of course and the surgery will just be performed across the border or illegally (likely by non-doctors, in unsterile/worse environments) etc.

Discuss I guess.

I agree that it's wrong to circumcize a child, but this is a clearcut case of not ****ing with people's beliefs IMO. The wrongness of stopping them from doing it is greater than the wrongness of them doing it.

This is terrible. Have you ever seen an uncircumcised penis?

Every day.

I just had a good laugh. I'm not sure if that was by design or not.

pics?


wait, no.


Ok, yes. Call it a morbid curiosity.

Banning the mutilation of children is a great idea.

what are the arguments for allowing it? (aside from Allah/Yahweh commanding it!)

cleanliness/lower risk of infection.

[view of Amurrican MD's from 1945-1980;
their view has since changed]

For anyone interested, RGT has a thread on this.

The debate over circumcision hits an interesting cross-section of religious/parenting freedom and protection of minors/body integrity. I'm not going to circumcise my kid when he's born. It's chopping off a body part ffs. Yeah I understand the cleanliness issues (which my mother-in-law won't let me forget), but babies create piles of filth, snot, and feces and we deal with it without lopping pieces of them off. Even if circumcision was without risks (it isn't) I would be against it.

So on the one hand I see why the battery laws should be enforced with circumcision. OTOH it's so entrenched as acceptable I can understand why people would be upset if they couldn't do it.

This is going to drive the price of foreskins through the roof.

It is crazy that this is even a question. Just stop mutilating child genitalia for no scientific purpose. I wish something like this could happen in the U.S.

Good. It should be banned. It serves no health purpose and interferes with a child's autonomy and possible sexual future. Yes, sometimes parents need to make medical decisions for their children, but barring an emergency, there is no reason in a first-world country (where sanitation and medicine are easily accessible) why perfectly healthy genitals should be altered. If you turn 14/16/18/age-of-consent and want to be circumcised, go right ahead.

Right to religious expression ends where an unwilling agent's (which infants by definition are) penis begins.

^
post is full of awesome

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.