Officials in San Francisco announced Wednesday that activists had collected enough signatures to put a measure on the city ballot in November that will ask city voters if they want to ban circumcision.
Petition ringleader Lloyd Schofield declared that, “nobody has a right to perform unnecessary surgery on another human being.” Schofield is part of a group called the Prohibition of Genital Cutting of Male Minors responsible for this first-in-the-nation type of legislation. If passed, the ordinance would make it illegal to “circumcise, excise, cut or mutilate the whole or any part of the foreskin, testicles or penis of another person who has not attained the age of 18 years.”
Should San Franciscans approve the ordinance, doctors who perform circumcision could be fined $1,000 or spend a year in jail.
Of course in Judeo-Christian culture circumcision has a history dating back several millennia. No religious exemptions would be allowed under the proposal. Circumcision has been routine in most of this country’s history. Evidence shows that circumcised males have lower rates of infections and diseases. The numbers of procedures have declined in recent years as health insurance companies stopped covering the supposedly unnecessary medical action.
The argument that parents don’t have the right to make medically decisions for their children is bogus. When my oldest son had hernia surgery at 5 weeks old I didn’t ask him beforehand if he wanted to undergo the operation. When my youngest son at 19 months of age had a temperature of 108 degrees and began having a seizure, I didn’t inquire whether he wanted to be rushed to an emergency room before we jumped in the car.
Most parents do what they think is best for their kids, including circumcision. Schofield is worried about the temporary physical pain that infants endure during the cutting. Perhaps he should be thinking about pain prior to eight days after birth. Preborn babies suffer damage when they are aborted. That dismemberment is permanent.
