Read my first sentence then.

I really don't know what to make of this. Young children or babies still feel pain.

We are talking about parents having something cut off their kids, who don't actually have a religion and may never have one, for religious reasons. I get that defending this must be difficult, but even mentioning anti-vaxxers seems bizarre.

And a blackout drunk person probably won't remember a little rape happening to them, where is the harm?!

My take is that maybe it should be illegal to chop parts of babies ***** off, but I'm wild like that.

OK I just go ahead and say it like it is: They circumcise you because they don't want you to masterbate. Because a foreskin is like a mini vagina; you don't need lube or apple pies or any of that ****, you just go.

In the case of the US it's because John Kellog hated sex (look it up). The religious circumcision I guess stems from the religions in questions originating in deserts. They used to live in tents, you hear everything... it's weird.

Parents have the right to inculcate their kids into whatever religion, teach them whatever nonsense, not vaccinate them, pierce their ears, let them get obese, sendatary, have backyard swiming pools, all sorts of things. That is, parents cause temporary and permanent harm of all kinds to their kids and our society accepts this as a fundamental right. But for circumcision - which is effectively a wash in terms of harm - there is an entirely unjustified call against it.

(note I'm not calling FOR it, we didn't circumsize our son, just that there is no compelling argument of harm done)

Wat.

So what? Babies will experience small, transient pain many times in their lives. This isn't remoltely an argument.

Let’s make female circumcision legal, too, while we’re at it. Let’s see what they have to say, then.

It’s mutilation, pure and simple. I want my foreskin back, dammit.

What on earth are you talking about? I said that In reference to a comment that sort of implied that as children won't remember the pain as adults it's better to get if out of the way.

Why not think about bad things you can stop, and go from there. The fact that you can't really do much about parents teaching their kids religious nonsense doesn't mean that anything goes in the name of religion. Some parents have denied their kids life saving treatment, preferring to pray, and their kids have died. If you accept that this is wrong then there is a line and question is where cutting bits off lies. In other words, you need a more specific argument.

What bad things? When parents deny live saving treatment, that causes real harm. But that's just the most extreme of hundreds of bad things we totally accept parental freedom for that are all also harmful. But circumcision? Nobody ITT has managed to articulate a single bad consequence of this yet except some sort of deontological claim. So I'm with you, focus on bad things you can stop. Don't focus on things that are a wash.

I get that it's more of a debate than for the female equivalent, and I'm not really up on the medical side (including the anesthetic risk, for example), but a human being having a part of their body removed because of their patent's religion at the time is just wrong in any civilised society. Many may not mind but I'm 100% certain that some adults resent that this happened to them - that is a bad thing.

And it's not a question of needing to focus on just one bad thing. It's not much legislative time for something so simple. You can target lots of bad things.

Count me in the "shouldn't be illegal but whatever" camp

FWIW I'm cut and love it but would not cut my sons, if I were to have any

Right, deontological. There isn't a single harmful consequence you can identify, but you decided the act in and of itself is bad. But why is it bad? It's basically a category error. "Removing body parts" sure sounds bad. If you were cutting of ears or fingers, it could be horrific! However, circumcision while maybe tacitly in that category is absolutely not representative of that category. In terms of medical, sexual, social consequences, it's basically a wash. Except for referring back to the category it's in - and asserting all members of the category are bad - the negative consequences are, as yet, unstated.

On the flip side, this is something three quarters of Americans want to do, sometimes for religious reasons, sometimes not. If you are going to block the free action of something, you have a massive burden to demonstrate a significant harmful consequences.

Umm...It's a surgery, rare but serious side effects may occur. While observational studies have shown that there maybe some slight medical benefit I'm unaware of any RCTs that have proven those benefits. It's a 100% medically unnecessary surgery on a patient that cannot give consent. Ethically doctors should refuse regardless of legality. If you want to cut yourself at 16, go ahead and prove your love for god or whatever reason you can come up with.

I have stated a specific "bad" consequence - being that some people who get cut resent it. That should be enough.

How do you feel about parents getting their kids tattooed with "Jesus" or something on their back? If this was a thing, could you find significant harmful consequences or would this be OK as a basic freedom for parents?

So what? Rare but serious side effects of not being circumcised occur too.

Uh doing RCTs vs observational studies would be absolutely ridiculous in this kind of scenario. Observational studies are quite fine in this context.

Nonsense. Firstly, children can't give consent for anything -
including all the actually harmful things parents do we are totally ok with socially. But more importantly, the doctors who perform circumcisions on 3/4s of Americans are required to uphold the Hippocratic oath, are required not to do harm, not this made up standard of yours. They also do abortions and breast enlargements and whatever else, things that are not medically necessary. So neither the "cannot consent" or the "unnecessary" part makes sense. The burden remains on you to show what on earth the harm is you seem convinced is magically there.

Ya bud, kids resent the choices their parents impose all the time. My wife is pissed her parents were hippies who lived on a tiny island with nonflourinated well water and used nonflourinated toothpaste because of bizarre anti-fluoride views . She had something like 20 cavities filled when she finally got dental insurance when she went to university, and will have tooth problems the rest of her life. Parents make bad choices that negatively influence their children's well being all the time. We accept that. It is part of the immutable social belief that parents have freedom to raise their children as they wish, how they wish, except in extreme cases of neglect or abuse. Heck, I'd even support changing the law to push out the boundary of those extreme cases (for instance, Canada is better than the US in terms of forcing stupid religious parents to use life saving medicine). But just because some presumably very small subset is resentful? No that isn't a meaningful justification for me, just as it wasn't for when the AAP recommended circumcision in the US.

No, this is nonsense.

Rare, so what? Do you think kids should be forced to wear car seat belts? Accidents are rare and sometimes wearing a seat belt actuallly causes an issue. So who cares I guess?

You say it's nonsense that kids can't give consent, and then say they can't give consent. Then you say it's nonsense that the procedure is unnceesary and talk about breast enhancement. The statement you said was nonsense was totally correct. It doesn't mean that the procedure should be banned, but it was hardly nonsense.

No, child. Observational studies do not prove efficacy, period. There are known risks to circumcision and no proven benefits. There’s also lots of **** parents do that should be illegal, such as not vaccinate children that can be vaccinated, and you know, performing medically unnecessary plastic surgery on infants. Now, informed consent is absolutely a cornerstone of medical ethics. Adults can get breast implants because they can give informed consent. You can’t, as your wife’s medical decision maker, get her implants while she is in a coma.

Yes, many people are resentful of many things when they get older - sometimes unreasonably so perhaps. But we are talking about an operation here that is totally uneccesary (if people think that there are genuine medical grounds then that's a different debate, but we are talking about the religious motivation) and may cause an issue with a low probability as any operation may do. The fact that you can't prevent every uneccesary thing that could cause resentment doesn't mean that you shouldn't stop those that can be stopped. It's not like parents would have any major constraints placed on them, they just couldn't take their kids for a specific operation that isn't needed.

Do you want to answer the question about religious tattoos on kids? Is that OK?

If a parent waited until the child was 10 years old and the parents wanted to circumcise the child but the child didn't want it then is the circumcision permissible?

Try to keep up, I wasn't dismissing rare events. Will made a bad comment that circumcision has rare consequences. Agreed. So does not being circumcised. My criticism was for him being silly and one-sided. Not wearing seat belts can cause sever harm which isnt' the case for wearing them, hence my support.

Lol at your reading comprehension. I was dismissing his argument, not claiming kids can't given consent - obviously they can't! And I said so!

Again, I was dismissing his argument. My goodness. He raised a putative ethical standard of doctors that is absolutely ridiculously, that is what I was calling nonsense. Neither "no consent" or "unnecessary" defeats circumcision.

What you have to do - what you failed to do - is identify a substantive harm.

can a parent give his infant a face tattoo?

How about a tattoo on his foreskin?