U.S. intervenes in Europe’s circumcision wars
The Obama administration’s anti-Semitism monitor has added an issue to his office’s portfolio: defending circumcision in Europe.
The Obama administration’s anti-Semitism monitor has added an issue to his office’s portfolio: defending circumcision in Europe.
The leader of Norway’s Jewish community praised his country’s parliament for passing an act enshrining ritual circumcision for boys.
A new survey of medical data going back more than two decades has found that the health benefits of circumcision far outweigh the risks. The publication of the article on April 4 by the medical journal Mayo Clinic Proceedings is the latest development to tip the scales in favor of circumcision in the long-running scientific, cultural and political struggles over the practice.\n
Israel called on the Council of Europe to rescind a resolution which is “fostering hate” by equating non-medical circumcision of boys with female genital mutilation.
A bill introduced in the Swedish parliament would ban the non-medical circumcision of males younger than 18.
Time appears to have run out for the proponents of a San Francisco ballot measure that would have banned circumcision of any boy under 18 in the city.
There is nothing esthetically appealing about a Brit Milah, the circumcision procedure performed on an 8 day old Jewish baby boy. To witness a barely one week old child strapped down with Velcro to a “Circ Board” in sight of everyone gathered is visually unappealing, if not spiritually uninspiring. If that were not enough, some officiants still engage in Metzitzah—the oral suction of blood from the circumcision. If not done by mouth directly, a pipette is used.
According to the proponent of a ballot initiative to prohibit the act of surgically removing a male baby’s foreskin, the term “circumcision” is nothing but a euphemism. “Having your foreskin amputated is probably more like it,” said Jena Troutman, a doula and mother of two sons, who initiated the process of petitioning Santa Monica to include the initiative on a future ballot.
San Francisco’s Catholic archbishop expressed his opposition to a city ballot initiative that would ban circumcision for minors. Archbishop George Niederauer condemned the initiative in a May 23 letter sent to the San Francisco Chronicle, his archdiocese’s newspaper reported.