CIN (Circumcision Information Network) 3:25

CIRCUMCISION INFORMATION NETWORK
Volume 3, Number 25, 9 July 1996
E-mail:  CircInfoNe@aol.com

The purpose of this weekly 1000-word bulletin is to educate the public about
and to protect children and other non-consenting persons from genital
mutilation.  Readers are encouraged to copy and redistribute it, and to
contribute written material.  --Rich Angell, Editor.

CLARIFICATION/CORECTION
In Volume 3:23, 11 June 1996 the following Stupid Quote of the Week appeared:
"Compared with the other decisions you've got ahead of you as a parent,
[circumcision] is trivial.  If you can't get past this one, you're in
trouble."  Ronald Poland, a Pennsylvania pediatrician, as quoted in The Wall
Street Journal, "Anxious Parents Question Merits Of Circumcision," 28 May
1996.

A couple of alert readers brought it to my attention that Ronald Poland is
actually opposed to circumcision but was quoted out of context in the above
article.  Whereas I took it to mean that he considered circumcision itself to
be trivial, what he probably meant was that it was no big deal to just leave
the kid alone.

R.N. CONSCIENTIOUS OBJECTORS TO INFANT CIRCUMCISION:  A MODEL FOR NURSE
EMPOWERMENT
An article by Betty Katz Sperlich, Mary Conant, and Frederick Hodges,
published in "REVOLUTION:  The Journal of Nurse Empowerment."
Part 1 of a multi-part series
Contributed by typist dyks96a@prodigy.com (George Hill)

The United States is the only Western Nation in the world that routinely
circumcises the majority of its male infants.  Both Canadian and English
medical associations advise against it and Australia strongly condemns it.

Medical circumcision was introduced into the United States in the late 19th
century as a method of preventing masturbation in boys, and neonatal
circumcision was not made routine until after World War II.  New evidence
indicates that this surgery, even if properly and uneventfully executed, is
not benign and may cause pain that has long-lasting and possibly irreversible
detrimental effects in the developing brain.

The complication rate of circumcision is one in 500; the death rate is one in
500,000.  Some research has indicated that circumcision entails a permanent
reduction in erotogenic response and sexual function.  Moreover, the
individual, the individual who lives with the consequences of this
non-therapeutic, amputative surgery has not consented to its performance.

Routine neonatal circumcision is a controversial procedure which, more than
most other surgical or medical procedures, elicits powerful emotional
reactions.  Because it involves questions of sexuality and the penis, it
exists in the realm of taboo, even among healthcare professionals.

In addition, the performance of an irreversible surgical amputation in the
absence of medical indications on an unconsenting minor raises serious
ethical questions.  The human-rights violation of forced genital excision of
unconsenting minors has been amply demonstrated in medical and legal
literature.

At the annual 1994 meeting of the Registered Nurses Association of British
Columbia, nurse delegates voted not to allow routine neonatal circumcision to
be discussed because it was too controversial.  But following this vote,
media coverage and a subsequent educational and consciousness raising
campaign by nurses confronted the taboo associated with the procedure.  The
following year, at the 1995 RNABC convention, the province's registered
nurses passed a resolution condemning routine circumcision.

Nurses working in St. Vincent's Hospital in Santa Fe, New Mexico were
expected to participate in the procedure.  However, when we confronted this
difficult issue, we set a historical precedent for nurses in organizing and
taking a leadership role in the reform of this medical practice.

Our medical position was that neonatal circumcision was unjustifiable.  Our
ethical position was that it violated a newborn's right to a whole, intact
body.  As patient advocates and nurse-educators working in maternal-child
health, we believed that we had a professional duty to dispel myths and offer
parents factual information about circumcision, and that we had a duty not to
participate in a procedure that surgically altered the normal genitalia of
unconsenting minors,

We observed physicians routinely asking parents if they wanted their child
circumcised, in effect soliciting the surgery.  Uninformed parents not only
mistakenly believed that they had a right to make such a decision, but that
an immediate decision was necessary.

Our conscientious-objector stand began in October, 1986, when we worked in
the newborn nursery and submitted a letter the nurse-manager and Vice
President of Patient Services stating that we no longer wanted to assist with
routine circumcision of newborns.

This decision, after much deliberation, was based on the position statements
of the American Academy of Pediatrics (1975) and the American College of
Obstetricians and Gynecologists (1978); the reading of relevant publications
by Edward Wallerstein and Anne Briggs; conversations with respected
pediatricians on our staff, and the example of those who refused to perform
circumcisions; knowledge of complications suffered by some infants who had
been circumcised; personal experiences in seeing the pain and suffering of
newborns undergoing the procedure; the prospect of possible litigation
regarding complications of the procedure; and lack of informed consent.

In response to this letter, we were told we would not be excused from
circumcision duties.  But we were unable to drop the matter and actively
sought to educate our selves and the parents of newborns about this issue
from both a
medical and human-rights perspective.  After six years of internal debate, we
came to the conclusion that we did not require the hospital administration's
permission to take an ethical stance.

STUPID QUOTE OF THE WEEK
Contributed by mancom@ix.netcom.com (Michael J. Manzo).
"When we adopted Matthew at the age of 5 months, he wasn't circumcised, and
we didn't want him to have to undergo general anesthesia to have it done.
 But when he was 2-1/2, he had  to undergo surgery for a double hernia
anyway, and so we had him circumcised.  My husband is circumcised, and we
wanted to have one less thing to be different between them."
Mary D'Onofrio of Hawthorne, New Jersey, as quoted in the Sunday Bergen
Record, 2 June 1996, in an article by Mary Amoroso on P L-10 entitled
"Congratulations, it's a boy; what about circumcision?"

FOR ADDITIONAL INFORMATION call NOCIRC, the National Organization of
Circumcision Information Resource Centers at (415) 488-9883, fax (415)
488-9660.  Ask about the resource provider nearest you.  For written
information, write NOCIRC, PO Box 2512, San Anselmo, CA 94979, with SASE
and/or donation if possible.  For further internet information, contact the
Doctors Opposing Circumcision Web site at
http://weber.u.washington.edu/~gcd/DOC.  For an up-to-date, and mostly
complete archive of the CIN the URL is http://www.cirp.org/CIRP/news/cin/.
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