Circumcision ruling: European bureaucrats are effectively banning Jewish boys, argues Brendan O'Neill, quoting the Jerusalem Post and unintentionally supported in his argument by the creepy quote from the Council of Europe in which it calls for "debate" and in the same breath announces what the result of said debate is to be. And this was put forward by a German rapporteur. I am not usually one for endless digs at modern Germans for evil done before most of them were born, but, Frau Rupperecht, do you have any idea of what that must look like to some of the Jerusalem Post's older readers?
And yet - irreversible modification of a child's body without the child's consent. Gulp.
And yet again - parents irreversibly modify their children's bodies by surgery all the time.
We have discussed this several times before, acrimoniously. Any new thoughts? Any constructive reformulations of old thoughts?
I have a question for medically knowledgeable readers. I gather that a far higher proportion - 79% in 2002 - of men in the US are circumcised than in the UK, yet the number uncircumcised is also huge. There must therefore be scope for large scale comparisons of outcomes. Have these been done? Does male circumcision make much difference?
posted by Natalie at 5:51 PM