Circumcision: Doctors Are Betraying Children

        Attorneys for the Rights of the Child
        2961 Ashby Avenue, Berkeley, CA 94705
        510-848-4437

FOR RELEASE: March 1, 1999   5 p.m. (E.T.)

CONTACT:  J. Steven Svoboda 510-848-4437 (svoboda1@flash.net)

Berkeley, CA—The American Academy of Pediatrics (AAP) has been charged with continuing to betray vulnerable children in its release today of a new policy regarding circumcision. According to Attorneys for the Rights of the Child (ARC), an organization of lawyers working to protect all children from breaches of their fundamental human rights, millions of boys will as a result continue to undergo medically unjustified and harmful surgery in order to perpetuate a social custom.

ARC Executive Director J. Steven Svoboda congratulated the AAP for its finding that no medical reason exists to support infant circumcision, saying, Since the AAP has now confirmed that circumcision is not a medical issue, it is clear that compelling legal and human rights concerns demand that it be eradicated. Svoboda noted that the rights to bodily integrity, to liberty and security of the person, and to freedom from discrimination on grounds of sex, religion or race are guaranteed by a number of globally accepted human rights documents including the Universal Declaration of Human Rights, the Convention on the Rights of the Child, and the International Covenant on Civil and Political Rights. Svoboda said, Circumcision seriously breaches the child's rights and is utterly incompatible with the doctor's legal and ethical duties toward the child patient. A parent's consent cannot justify removal of healthy tissue—whether it be a finger, a breast, a clitoris, or a foreskin—without a valid medical reason.

According to Svoboda, the AAP will not succeed in its apparent attempt to protect itself and its members from criminal and civil liability for performing circumcisions by mentioning potential medical benefits to the procedure. Svoboda said, The AAP itself concedes that routine newborn circumcision is without medical justification. Its assertion that cultural, religious and ethnic traditions may be taken into account is quite inconsistent with medical ethics as well as unjustified by domestic law and human rights principles.

Svoboda commented, We now understand that cultural, religious and ethnic traditions do not justify circumcising a girl, which many countries throughout the world have made illegal, so how can such considerations justify taking a knife to a boy's penis without his consent and cutting off highly specialized and important tissue? An average circumcision removes approximately half the penile skin sheath, which renowned anthropologist Ashley Montagu has termed a highly significant loss.

Svoboda noted that leading authorities on female genital mutilation, including Hanny Lightfoot-Klein and Nahid Toubia, have warned that it is never acceptable to remove functioning body parts from children without medical justification, and have emphatically stated that circumcisions of boys and girls both violate medical ethics, legal requirements, and human rights principles. One of Canada's leading medical ethicists, Dr. Margaret A. Somerville, has also stated her opposition to the practice as a form of criminal assault.

The AAP cannot reconcile its current position with the advice of its own ethics committee, Svoboda added. Citing the AAP Bioethics Committee for its article, Informed Consent, Parental Permission, and Assent in Pediatric Practice, PEDIATRICS Vol. 95 No. 2 (February 1995), Svoboda said, The AAP's own Bioethics Committee has acknowledged that it is the child who is the patient and not the parents, and moreover, that the doctor has a legal and ethical duty to render medical care based on the patient's needs and not on parental desires or proxy consent. Svoboda added, The AAP has committed a serious disservice to its members and to the American public by continuing to ignore its own ethical guidelines and by failing to help to bring an end to this painful, harmful and profoundly damaging practice.

Svoboda concluded, There could have been no better way for the AAP to move child care into the new millenium than by taking the clear stand against circumcision that human rights and medical ethics as well as decency, fairness, and humanity demand. While there are aspects of the AAP's statement that have merit, its failure to condemn the practice will create legal and medical repercussions which will haunt it and the American public for many decades to come.

- END -

The Circumcision Information and Resource Pages are a not-for-profit educational resource and library. IntactiWiki hosts this website but is not responsible for the content of this site. CIRP makes documents available without charge, for informational purposes only. The contents of this site are not intended to replace the professional medical or legal advice of a licensed practitioner.