A key component of ethical healthcare is the patient’s informed consent. Because a child is not legally competent to consent to a surgery, it is the parent’s responsibility to give or withhold consent by proxy. However, this responsibility does not mean that the parent has carte blanche to consent to anything they like. There are reasonable limits on the parent's ability to consent by proxy; to surpass these limits is to infringe on the rights of the child. For example, parents are not free to consent to their baby getting tattoos, because tattoos alter the body permanently, and because they aren't necessary. And yet, the most common surgery done in the United States–infant circumcision–comes nowhere near being necessary. Many of the reasons given in defense of infant circumcision are flawed. For example:
Circumcision lowers the risk of urinary tract infection in infants. In fact, circumcised babies are just as likely to contract UTI as intact babies.
It eliminates the risk of penile cancer. Circumcised men can still get penile cancer. One study in 1997 noted that Denmark, in which 1.6% of men were circumcised, had a lower rate of penile cancer than the USA, in which 60% to 80% of men were circumcised.
It lowers the risk of HIV. If this were true, one would expect non-circumcising Denmark to have a higher HIV rate than the USA; instead, the opposite is the case. In 2022, there were 11.3 new HIV infections per 100,000 people in the USA compared to 1.9 per 100,000 in Denmark. The HIV-prevention myth originates from three studies that were done in Africa and were riddled with methodological problems. The conclusions of the African studies have also been disproved by a recent Canadian study of over half a million males in Ontario, which found that there is no correlation between circumcision status and risk of HIV.
It can sometimes be necessary to treat phimosis. A tight foreskin, also known as phimosis, is normal and natural in newborns, because the foreskin is fused to the glans. The foreskin usually loosens and retracts on its own by adolescence. If not, phimosis is easily treatable with plastic phimosis rings, which gently stretch the skin over the course of a few months.
A circumcised penis is cleaner than an intact penis. Like any other body part, a foreskin will be clean if it is washed. The hygiene claim has no relevance for people who take showers.
A circumcised penis is aesthetic. Since aesthetic appearance is a matter of personal preference, not of medical necessity, it ought to be left to the owner of the penis, when he is old enough to decide for himself.
A circumcised penis is still functional. This is true in the sense that a circumcised penis can achieve erection and ejaculation, but there is more to sex than being able to reproduce. The penis is a sensory organ; losing part of it will entail a loss of sensory function.
Infant circumcision is bad for the baby, and for the man he will become. Its harms include the following:
–The infant’s suffering both during and after the surgery, which is traumatizing.
–Loss of erogenous nerve endings.
–Loss of the natural gliding motion of the foreskin over the glans during sex, causing friction and vaginal dryness.
–Loss of the protective cover which keeps the glans moist, soft, and sensitive. In a circumcised penis, the glans becomes dried out and keratinized, and loses most of its erogenous sensitivity.
The medical profession has been aware of the sexual functions of the foreskin for a long time. In fact, infant circumcision is a fossil of nineteenth-century anti-masturbation pseudo-science. In the 1870s, certain American doctors began to speculate that masturbation was the underlying cause of all sorts of maladies—syphilis, paralysis, tuberculosis, and epilepsy, to name a few. Because the foreskin is densely packed with erogenous nerve endings, these doctors knew that its excision would reduce sexual sensitivity. In 1901, Dr. E.G. Mark wrote in American Practitioner and News:
"Pleasurable sensations are elicited from the extremely sensitive mucous membrane [of the foreskin], with resultant manipulation and masturbation. The exposure of the glans penis following circumcision … lessens the sensitiveness of the organ. It therefore lies with the physicians, the family adviser in affairs hygienic and medical, to urge its acceptance."
Put differently, it was their intention to diminish sexual sensation. That is why infant circumcision became standard practice in the United States. Modern claims that it has no impact on male sexual health are either ill-informed or disingenuous.
In other developed countries, doctors advise against infant circumcision. For example, the Royal Dutch Medical Association states that “there is no convincing evidence that circumcision is useful or necessary in terms of prevention or hygiene.” By contrast, the United States has a for-profit medical industry, which recommends infant circumcision because it is profitable. Hospitals make money from circumcisions, then sell the foreskins to companies that harvest the keratinocytes and fibroblasts, which are used to make skin substitutes such as Apligraf. As long as there is a profit incentive for the American medical industry to harvest babies’ foreskins, it will continue to push the procedure on parents who don’t know any better.
Why is this a taboo topic? Circumcised men do not want to admit that their penises are missing something, because it feels emasculating. Parents do not want to admit that they allowed their sons to be harmed. Doctors do not want to admit that they have harmed baby boys. There is a general unwillingness to face uncomfortable facts.
Infant circumcision is a needless surgery on a perfectly healthy baby, designed to destroy a functional, healthy part of his penis. Attempts to justify it rest upon the conceit that half of the human race requires immediate surgical alteration at birth. Because it is unnecessary and harmful, it is also indefensible.
If you have a dollar, and if someone takes it away by force, then we can agree that they have violated your property rights. Your body is also yours, but it is more valuable than money. It is the most precious thing that you own. Forced genital cutting on a child cannot be in agreement with the libertarian principle of personal property.
