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San Francisco Considers Male Circumcision Ban
(Nov. 12) -- Fresh off their city's banning of Happy Meals, some San Francisco residents want to put a stop to another cruelty inflicted upon young children: male circumcision.
"A proposed ballot measure for the November 2011 ballot -- when voters will be electing San Francisco's next mayor -- would amend The City's police code 'to make it a misdemeanor to circumcise, excise, cut or mutilate the foreskin, testicle or penis of another person who has not attained the age of 18,'" The San Francisco Examiner reports.
The practice is standard in the United States and has spread far beyond religious communities where the cutting was established as a ritual.
In the West, female circumcision is often referred to as genital mutilation and condemned as a barbaric practice of benighted and paternalistic societies. But not so with males. The United States has the highest incidence rate of male circumcision in the world at 56 percent.
Some studies suggest that circumcision can reduce the incident of penis cancer (a very rare disease) and reduce the likelihood of receiving a sexually transmitted disease during unprotected sex. (Though, of course, a circumcised penis is not a condom.) Still other studies suggest that a degree of sexual sensitivity is lost after the foreskin is snipped.
Plus, it's a grisly procedure. Anti-circumcision advocate Andrew Sullivan writes, "the majority of circumcisions do not use anesthetic. Babies are strapped into a restraint, keeping their legs apart, and their arms and abdomen down, because when they have their penises sliced open, they scream and struggle. ... If parents tore the skin off their infants in any other part of the body, they'd be arrested for abuse."
Someday, in San Francisco at least, perhaps they will.
(Nov. 12) -- Fresh off their city's banning of Happy Meals, some San Francisco residents want to put a stop to another cruelty inflicted upon young children: male circumcision.
"A proposed ballot measure for the November 2011 ballot -- when voters will be electing San Francisco's next mayor -- would amend The City's police code 'to make it a misdemeanor to circumcise, excise, cut or mutilate the foreskin, testicle or penis of another person who has not attained the age of 18,'" The San Francisco Examiner reports.
The practice is standard in the United States and has spread far beyond religious communities where the cutting was established as a ritual.
In the West, female circumcision is often referred to as genital mutilation and condemned as a barbaric practice of benighted and paternalistic societies. But not so with males. The United States has the highest incidence rate of male circumcision in the world at 56 percent.
Some studies suggest that circumcision can reduce the incident of penis cancer (a very rare disease) and reduce the likelihood of receiving a sexually transmitted disease during unprotected sex. (Though, of course, a circumcised penis is not a condom.) Still other studies suggest that a degree of sexual sensitivity is lost after the foreskin is snipped.
Plus, it's a grisly procedure. Anti-circumcision advocate Andrew Sullivan writes, "the majority of circumcisions do not use anesthetic. Babies are strapped into a restraint, keeping their legs apart, and their arms and abdomen down, because when they have their penises sliced open, they scream and struggle. ... If parents tore the skin off their infants in any other part of the body, they'd be arrested for abuse."
Someday, in San Francisco at least, perhaps they will.
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