Renowned ethicist (and a close colleague of ours and the author of innumerable superlative articles on genital integrity) Brian Earp passes along the following sad news that three babies have recently been infected with herpes in New York City as a direct result of ritual circumcisions incorporating direct oral contact by the circumciser with the genitals of the newborns. A news report on these lamentable events can be accessed at http://outbreaknewstoday.com/new-york-city-three-new-cases-of-neonatal-herpes-following-ritual-jewish-circumcision-reported-33262/.
Here is Brian’s post:
Dear colleagues,
I write with very sad news concerning three newborns who have been infected with genital herpes as a result of being circumcised.
The unjust double standards based on both sex and religion are shocking in this case. Below is the official announcement just out from the New York City health department, advising non-medical ultra-Orthodox Jewish ritual circumcisers to “use mouthwash” before performing direct oral-genital suction of blood from infants’ penises, after removing roughly 1/3 of the functioning, erotogenic skin system of the organ, so as to reduce herpes risk (harm reduction approach). Meanwhile, devout Muslim physicians who perform a sterile prick of the clitoral hood, removing no tissue, for religious reasons are arrested as “mutilators” and charged with violating federal law (zero tolerance approach).
This is a legally (not to mention morally) unsustainable situation, even without the orogenital contact issue, which helps to explain why prominent defenders of ritual male circumcision — who have connected the dots that so many others refuse to connect — have been arguing with increasing force in recent years that “minor” ritual female genital cutting should now be allowed in Western countries even without the consent of the affected girl, as I explain here: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=GBH0g_Cl7Rk. In the video, I provide arguments for why NO child’s genitals should be cut unless it is urgently medically necessary.
On Facebook, someone asked whether Jewish ritual circumcisers are required to be licensed in order to perform genital surgery on a non-consenting child. The answer is no. There is no legal requirement that mohels be licensed or demonstrate even minimal competence with handling common circumcision complications. As Dena Davis has written, you need a license to cut people’s hair, but not male children’s genitals.
Even efforts to impose a non-legal requirement that parents sign a consent form stating that they understand that their newborn’s penile wound will be directly sucked on by the mohel who may or may not have herpes was rejected by the ultra-Orthodox community (parents often do NOT know this in advance). In fact, repealing the soft consent form requirement was a “priority” for the De Blasio administration: https://www.nytimes.com/2015/09/10/nyregion/new-york-city-health-board-repeals-rule-on-consent-forms-for-circumcision-ritual.html.
Who will stand up and speak for the newborns who must live their whole lives with the consequences of this surgery on their most private body part, and, in the case of this particular variant of the ritual, the knowledge that an old man took their 8-day-old penis into his mouth based on religious beliefs the child may not grow up to share, when the child could not possibly escape or resist.
I cannot understand how we live in a country where Muslim parents and doctors are demonized and thrown in jail for sterilized, non-tissue-removing pricking of the clitoral foreskin for religious reasons, while the wholesale removal of the penile foreskin — unhygienically, with mouth-to-penis contact, and not even the informed “proxy” consent of the parents — is allowed to happen on 3,000 babies PER YEAR in New York City alone. This is not a “fringe” thing that happens every once in a while by a few crazed or rogue individuals. Rather, leading politicians at the city, state, and national levels turn a blind eye to this widespread, ongoing abuse of children, in some cases openly acknowledging that their hope is not to offend a group they expect to vote for them and their policies as a “bloc.”
This extreme injustice has gone on long enough. It must be stopped.
Sincerely,
Brian [Earp]
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Brian D. Earp, Departments of Philosophy and Psychology, Yale University
Associate Director, Yale-Hastings Program in Ethics & Health Policy
Research Fellow, Uehiro Centre for Practical Ethics, University of Oxford
Academia.edu page; ResearchGate page; Twitter page
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