An Open Letter to the Physicians of
The Catholic Medical Association
by
Ms. Petrina Fadel, B.A.
The author is a homemaker, mother
of four and grandmother of two. She has been active in
the Right to Life Movement for nearly thirty years, and
in Genital Integrity issue for over twenty. She
currently serves as President of Cortland County
Citizens for Life, Inc., an affiliate of the New York
State Right to Life Committee, Inc.
1 Corinthians 12: 18 - "But that
isn't the way God has made us. He has made many parts
for our bodies and has each part just where he wants
it."
As a pro-life Roman Catholic mother
and grandmother, and an advocate for children who
cannot speak for themselves, I am writing to bring to
your attention a moral law violation that occurs every
day in the United States at Catholic hospitals - the
elective circumcisions of baby boys. Catholic hospitals
in the U.S. follow the moral law by not allowing
abortions, sterilizations, and genital mutilations of
females, but they violate the moral law by allowing
non-therapeutic, elective circumcisions of male infants
at their facilities. This occurs mainly in U.S.
hospitals but not in hospitals in most other countries
where the rights of male children are respected.
The Catechism of the Catholic
Church, under "Respect for bodily integrity" (The
Vatican, 1994, #2297) states, "Except when performed
for strictly therapeutic medical reasons, directly
intended amputations, mutilations, and sterilizations
are against the moral law." Elective circumcision
(i.e., healthy foreskin amputation) fits the definition
of amputation, which means to cut off. (In 1999, the
American Academy of Pediatrics described circumcision
as "amputation of the foreskin." In 2000, the American
Medical Association described elective circumcisions as
"non-therapeutic.") It is done usually for social and
cultural reasons, not medical ones! (Much as most
abortions today are done for social reasons, not
medical ones!) Catholic hospitals don't use the line
that parents have the right to make a choice for
abortion, and that the hospital should remain neutral.
Neither should Catholic hospitals or Catholic
physicians working at Catholic or secular facilities
use the parental choice line for circumcision, which
ignores the baby's choice and his right to his own
bodily integrity.
The Ethical and Religious Directives for
Catholic Health Care Services (ERD), Fourth
Edition, (June 15, 2001) supports respect for bodily
integrity. Catholic hospitals that allow elective
non-therapeutic circumcisions of infants violate these
directives. Part III, Directive 29 reiterates what the
Catechism teaches under "Respect for Bodily Integrity"
when it states, "All persons served by Catholic health
have the right and duty to protect and preserve their
bodily and functional integrity." The 1971 ERD and the
1977 ERD likewise support respect for bodily integrity.
The 1977 ERD, Directive 33 states, "Unnecessary
procedures, whether diagnostic or therapeutic, are
morally objectionable. A procedure is unnecessary when
no proportionate purpose justifies it." The Church
recognizes the right of a healthy person to donate a
heathy kidney as an act of charity, but no donation is
involved in the forcible amputation of the foreskin of
an infant, since an infant is incapable of giving
consent to the amputation of any of his healhy body
parts until he reaches the age of majority. The
foreskin belongs to the infant, not to the parents or
the physician, since it is part of his body and not
theirs. Companies that buy and use amputated foreskins
of infants for research in developing other products
likewise violate the moral law.
The healthy foreskin, like other
healthy body parts, serves a protective and sexual
function throughout life, and its removal violates the
bodily and functional integrity and human dignity of
the human person. Circumcision is both an amputation
and a mutilation. The American Heritage
Dictionary defines "mutilate" thus: 1. To cut off
or destroy a limb or other essential part. 2. To render
imperfect by excising or radically altering a part."
The foreskin is a protective and sexual organ. It
covers and protects the sterile urinary tract
environment, contains tens of thousands of specialized
nerve endings, and provides the sliding and gliding
mechanism that allows for non-abrasive, lubricating
normal sexual intercourse for both male and female.
Many men do feel they were violated and mutilated as a
result of elective circumcision, and some have
undergone surgical and non-surgical methods of foreskin
restoration to try to restore some of their lost
functional integrity. Like some women who undergo
breast reconstruction after mastectomies to feel whole
again, these men also want to feel whole again.
See www.noharmm.org and www.sexuallymutilatedchild.org for
further information.
No national medical group in the world
today recommends infant circumcision, including the American Academy of
Pediatrics, the American Medical
Association, the American Academy of
Family Physicians, The American College of
Obstetricians and Gynecologists, the Canadian Paediatric Society, the
College of Physicians and Surgeons of
Saskatchewan, the Australian College of Paediatrics,
the Australian Medical Association, the British Medical Association, and
the Royal Australasian College of
Physicians.
The American Academy of Pediatrics'
Committee on Bioethics stated in February of 1995 that
pediatric health care providers "have legal and ethical
duties to their child patients to render competent
medical care based on what the patient needs, not what
someone else expresses…. The pediatrician's
responsibilities to his or her patient exist
independent of parental desires or proxy consent."
Physicians who perform medically unnecessary
circumcisions on infants, thereby exposing them to the
risks and damages of the surgery (which can be serious
and even deadly), are not basing their care on what the
child needs but on parental social desires. This is not
good medicine, and it does not follow the dictum to
"First, do no harm."
Social reasons for circumcision
typically include a circumcised father wanting his son
to "match" him or "match" his circumcised brothers (as
opposed to the baby "matching" himself), or parents
wanting their son to "look like" (lack like?) other
circumcised boys. These are not "strictly therapeutic
medical reasons." (Religious, ritual circumcisions
among Jews and Muslims typically take place after a
baby has been discharged from the hospital and are not
done for "strictly therapeutic reasons," but they don't
claim to be.) By contrast, a "strictly therapeutic
medical" circumcision is one done to treat a disease,
defect, or pathology that is present. A circumcision
done in hopes of possibly preventing a future problem
is one done for "alleged prophylactic reasons," not
"strictly therapeutic reasons." Thus, nearly every
elective infant circumcision performed at a Catholic
hospital today fails to qualify as being performed for
the reasons spelled out in the Catholic Catechism.
During the time of Christ, only the
tip of the foreskin was removed during a ritual
circumcision, not the whole foreskin as is done today
by physicians and mohels. One writer made the following
comparison, noting that Christ's circumcision was the
first time His innocent blood was shed, and Christ's
crucifixion was the last time His innocent blood was
shed. Except for our first pope, Peter, who was Jewish,
it is probably safe to say that most of our popes
(including the present one) were left intact, i.e.,
NOT circumcised.
Christians have no religious
obligations to circumcise their children. My Catholic
Bible states that circumcision is unnecessary now, and
it refers readers to Acts 15: 1-12, Galatians 2: 3-10.,
and Galatians 5: 2-6. In Acts 15: 10, St. Paul told the
Jews who had become Christians and who were now
pressing for circumcision of the Gentiles, "And now are
going to correct God by burdening the Gentiles with a
yoke that neither we nor our fathers were able to
bear?" [CIRP Note: St. Peter made
the quoted statement, not St. Paul.] At the time
of the Council of Florence (1438-1445), Pope Eugenius
IV issued a Papal Bull which states in part, "Therefore
it strictly orders all who glory in the name of
Christian, not to practice circumcision either before
or after baptism, since whether or not they place their
hope in it, it cannot possibly be observed without loss
of eternal salvation." Fr. Jules Paquin, S.J.
(Morale et medecine: Comite des Hopitaux du
Quebec, 1957, p. 246) and Fr. Edwin F. Healy, S.J.
(Medical Ethics, Loyola University Press,
Chicago, 1956, p. 128) both wrote that since routine
circumcisions are not medically defensible, they are
morally objectionable.
Children of both sexes deserve to be
loved and accepted the way God has created them,
whether they are infants born in American hospitals, or
children in Africa who are endangered by the custom of
circumcision, excision, or infibulation. Europeans, who
don't routinely circumcise male infants, look aghast at
those who practice elective infant circumcision, and
rightly so. The genital mutilation and sexual abuse of
children of both sexes must stop, and must no longer
occur in Catholic hospitals. This issue must not be
swept under the rug as was the issue of sexual abuse
within the Catholic Church for so many years. God does
not make a mistake every time he creates a baby boy in
the United States or a child in Africa, one that
doctors and parents need to correct. The foreskin
serves a purpose on the body, protecting the glans
during infancy, and later serving a sexual function for
both males and females. Worldwide, 85% of males are NOT
circumcised.
For further information, see these
articles in the British Journal of Urology,
"Erogenous Tissue Loss after Circumcision," February
1996 at:
http://www.cirp.org/library/anatomy/taylor/
and "The Prepuce: Anatomy, Physiology, Innervation,
Immunology, and Sexual Function," 1999 at:
http://cirp.org/library/anatomy/cold-taylor.
U.S. Catholic hospitals send a mixed
message to parents by allowing medically unnecessary,
harmful circumcisions to continue, thus appearing to
give tacit approval and legitimacy to a non-therapeutic
procedure that clearly violates the moral law as
expressed in the Catholic Catechism. Catholic hospitals
that ask parents of male newborns if they want their
children circumcised (Usually after providing
incomplete information about the risks of circumcision
and the benefits of non-circumcision) are soliciting
for medically unnecessary surgery.
Jesus brought a New Covenant of Love,
one of loving your neighbor as yourself. Loving a child
does not mean strapping him to a board and then
painfully cutting off a healthy part of his body
(usually without anesthesia) for social or cultural
reasons. That is a most violent way to "welcome" a
child into this world. It is time for our Catholic
hospitals to stop elective circumcisions on their
premises, even if it means a loss of income, because it
is the right thing to do!
Lawsuits have been brought after the
deaths and mutilations of infants from elective
circumcision. In 1966, an infant at St.
Boniface Hospital in Winnipeg, Canada, a Catholic
hospital, was so severely mutilated by an unnecessary
circumcision that he underwent a "sex change." In his
teens, this child discovered that God had created him
male, and he has since undergone numerous operations to
change his appearance back to that of a male. The book,
As Nature Made Him - The Boy Who Was Raised as a
Girl, by John Colapinto, tells this sad story. At
Providence Hospital in Anchorage,
Alaska, a Catholic hospital, a settlement was reached
after an elective circumcision in January of 1986 left
newborn Jacob Sweet severely brain damaged, paralyzed,
and blind. Presently, a lawsuit by William Stowell has
been brought against Good Samaritan Hospital, a Catholic
hospital in West Islip, New York. Mr. Stowell was
subjected to a medically unnecessary circumcision there
as an infant nineteen years ago, and he is now suing
the hospital and doctor for battery, and for violating
his rights to his own bodily integrity. If Mr. Stowell
wins his case, his lawyer plans to bringa class-action
suit against the hospital on behalf of all the males
who were circumcised there unnecessarily, and against
their will. Any hospital, Catholic or secular, could
also become a defendant in such a lawsuit if it
continues to permit the unnecessary amputations of
healthy foreskins from male infants.
Pope John Paul II, in "The Gospel of Life," April, 1995,
wrote about "New Threats to Human Life," #3, where he
included mutilation. He said, "The Second Vatican
Council, in a passage which retains all of its
relevance today, forcefully condemned a number of
crimes and attacks against human life. Thirty years
later, taking up the words of the Council and with the
same forcefulness I repeat that condemnation in the
name of the whole Church, certain that I am
interpreting the genuine sentiment of every upright
conscience: Whatever is opposed to life itself, such as
any type of murder, genocide, abortion, euthanasia, or
willful self-distruction, whatever violates the
integrity of the human person, such as mutilation,
torments inflicted on body or mind, attempts to coerce
the will itself; whatever insults human dignity, such
as subhuman living conditions, arbitrary imprisonment,
deportation, slavery, prostitution, the selling of
women and children; as well as disgraceful working
conditions, where people are treated as mere
instruments of gain rather than as free and responsible
persons; all these things and others like them are
infamies indeed. They poison human society, and they do
more harm to those who practice them than to those who
suffer from the injury. Moreover, they are a supreme
dishonor to the Creator."
Catholic physicians who perform
non-therapeutic circumcisions on non-consenting infants
need to ask themselves why they are violating the
integrity of these infants, tormenting their bodies,
insulting their human dignity, and using these children
as instruments of financial gain. (Dr. Thomas Wiswell,
not a Catholic but an ardent proponent of infant
circumcision, was quoted in The Boston Globe on
June 22, 1987 as saying, "I have some good friends who
are obstetricians outside the military, and they look
at a foreskin and almost see a $125 price tag on it.
Each one is that much money. Heck, if you do 10 a week,
that's over $1,000 a week, and they don't take that
much time.") Physicians who perform medically
unnecessary circumcisions harm themselves as they
inflict unnecessary suffering on innocent children.
What a dishonor to our Creator for any physician to
think that he or she can create a better baby than our
Lord can!
What will Catholic physicians do to
see that non-therapeutic circumcisions of male infants
are no longer allowed at Catholic hospitals in the
United States? What will the Catholic Medical
Association do to ensure that Catholic hospitals live
up to the teaching expressed in the Catholic Catechism,
and that the right of male infants to their own bodily
integrity is respected within the confines of Catholic
hospitals? As a practicing Roman Catholic, I feel
obligated to write to you about this serious issue that
impacts the welfare of children. I thank you for your
attention to this issue, and I look forward to your
response.
In memory of all children, male and female, who
have lost their lives
to circumcision. To the ones we know and the ones
only God knows:
Aleck, Baby Boy - June 10, 1910 - Island
County, WA
Roland Albert McCarty - 1932 - Jackonville, FL
Christopher Dolezal - November, 1982 - Des Moines,
IA
Steven Christopher Chacon - November 1986 - San
Francisco, CA
Allen A. Ervin - July 8, 1992 - Spartanburg,
SC
Demetrius Manker - June 26, 1993 - Carol City,
FL
Jeremie Johnson - July 18, 1995 - Houston, TX
Dusty Evans - October, 1998 - Cleveland, OH
Ryleigh Roman Bryan McWillis - August 22, 2002 -
Vancouver,
British Columbia, Canada
Zola Mjamba - November 19, 2002 - Umtata, South
Africa
Sifoso Kobo - November 21, 2002 - Umtata South
Africa
[CIRP Note: The Linacre
Quarterly is the official journal of the Catholic
Medical Association. The Linacre Quarterly is
published at Washington, D.C. and covers philosophy and
ethics of medical practice.]
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