CIN (Circumcision Information Network) 3:2

CIRCUMCISION INFORMATION NETWORK
Volume 3, Number 2, 12 January 1996
E-mail:  CircInfoNe@aol.com

The purpose of this weekly 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.

"THE DARKER REGIONS OF THE HUMAN MIND"
Contributed by Johnny4444@aol.com

Some Statements About Circumcisers
From "The Unkindest Cut of All," by John M. Foley, MD
Fact, July 1966, Ralph Ginzburg, Publisher
[Quoted with permission]

...why anyone would want circumcision made compulsory may seem puzzling...
...One answer, of course, is that if circumcision were made compulsory, the
circumciser would be protected whenever he happens to cripple or kill the
little boy he operates on--a "complication" that is not so very uncommon.
 Another answer, I think, must be sought in the darker regions of the human
mind, because circumcision is simply an unmitigated fraud.  It is nothing but
wanton and unnecessary mutilation.  The annual 2 million assembly-line
circumcisions in this country are a monument to the gullibility and stupidity
of the American public.

For 60 years, a powerful and articulate minority in our profession has tried
to enforce a taboo against any objective discussion of the merits or demerits
of circumcision....To question its value has become all but unthinkable. The
medical literature is virtually closed except to those who drool over the
operation's alleged advantages.

...William Keith C. Morgan, M.D., ...has written in the Journal of the
American Medical Association[:]..."Why is the operation of circumcision
practiced? One might as well attempt to explain the rites of voodoo!"
...Peter Van Zante, M.D., ...writes in the Medical Tribune:  "Circumcision of
a helpless child is a crime." Elsewhere he has said: "Circumcision is cruel
and mutilating and actually should be outlawed." In 1920, a British physician
named G. S. Thompson, who had once circumcised himself, later concluded that
circumcision was nothing more nor less than "a barbarous and unnecessary
mutilation" (British Medical Journal, 1920). 

Efforts to justify circumcision have been made since the very beginnings of
history. The desire to mutilate came first; the "reasons" came later...

This process of rationalization has culminated in the supposed relationship
between the husband's foreskin and cancer of the genitals--one of the
greatest hoaxes in the history of medicine...

...Circumcision provides a convenient and socially acceptable outlet for the
perverted component of the circumciser's libido.  I have had personal
experience with the psychopathology that underlies the wish to circumcise.
 The pitiful wails of the suffering infant are all too often the background
for lewd and obscene commentary by the obstetrician to his audience of
nurses.  Several years ago I saw an infant born with multiple deformities.
 He could not live more than a few months at most, but to add to his
miseries, this unfortunate bit of humanity had to undergo a thorough
circumcision.

I have seen two medical students fight over the privilege of doing
circumcisions on the newborn, although these same students showed neither
interest nor aptitude for opening boils or doing other surgical tasks.

In 1951, I witnessed an autopsy on an infant who had died from an infected
circumcision--a death rendered even more tragic because the mother had tried
to persuade the obstetrician to spare her infant the ordeal.

Dr. Alexander Schaffer, a noted pediatrician, tells with horror of a case in
which an infant was being delivered as a frank breech (buttocks first).
 Before delivering the baby, and just as the penis came into view, the
obstetrician seized it and circumcised it.  That obstetrician, I would say,
may be capable .... But sexually I say he is a monster.  And I say that one
of the reasons why circumcision is so common in this country stems from the
sadism of the crypto-pervert.

...psychiatrists have long been agreed that circumcision is basically a
punitive act...

...they [those who want all males circumcised] suffer from "foreskin envy."
 Cut off a man's tonsils and it does not affect his feelings about his
neighbor's tonsils, but cut off his foreskin and his neighbor's foreskin
becomes an object of envy and hatred.  The circumcised have always behaved as
if their circumcision were a stigma of inferiority.  Jew, Moor, and Turk
forced circumcision on servants, slaves, and whole nations of conquered
people.

Because the motivations of the foreskin-phobes are so irrational, these
people are hard to combat.  The introduction of routine circumcision as a
"medical" measure at the turn of the century aroused vigorous opposition
within the profession.  Dr. Warren Stone Bickham, an eminent surgeon,
declared that circumcision was a disgrace and a discredit to the surgeon
responsible.  Nevertheless by 1920 the opposition had dwindled, and the
fanatical circumcisers were in possession of the field.  The opponents of
circumcision failed because they did not understand the motives of the
circumcisers and therefore could not grapple with them.

...Only the circumcised refer to the foreskin as a "useless appendage."

[Has anyone done a study on circumcisers? What kind of person trains himself
(or herself) and maneuvers himself (or herself) into a position where he (or
she) can get paid to cut healthy erotogenic tissue -- living flesh -- from
the genitals of unwilling, unconsenting children and babies -- or, for that
matter, from willing, consenting adults?]

[This document, formatted here as an ASCII text file, is from Deeper Into
Circumcision: An Invitation to Awareness and Guide to Resources for
Researchers, Parents, Restorers, Activists and the Merely Curious, by John A.
Erickson.]

YOUNG MEN NEED TO FIGHT BACK
Both David Llewllyn and Charles Bonner, attorney's at law are willing to
start litigation for any man 18 years to 19 years old who wish to sue the
hospital and doctors for wrongful infant or childhood circumcision.  They can
be contacted through NOCIRC, at the address below.  We really need to have
some young men come forward to go to court to show the world what is being
done is illegal!

SCREAM OF THE WEEK 
(Statements Documenting Infant Circumcision Pain)
Submitted by Johnny4444@aol.com

"Newborns do feel pain...the contrary belief that the smallest babies...are
oblivious to pain has persisted for decades among many physicians who have
routinely operated on these children with little or no anesthesia."
("Infants' Sense of Pain is Recognized, Finally," New York Times, Nov. 24,
1987)

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.
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