Circumcision
Marty, This is sensible. Obviously, these categories bleed into each other (no pun intended). Perry From: Marty Lederman lederman.ma...@gmail.com Date: Wed, 11 Jul 2012 16:49:33 -0400 Perry: very helpful. Would you add this as a third category?: if the state demonstrates that many (most) adult men regret their parents' decision to circumcise. It's if and when that ever happens -- not before -- that this will seem like a difficult question. ___ To post, send message to Religionlaw@lists.ucla.edu To subscribe, unsubscribe, change options, or get password, see http://lists.ucla.edu/cgi-bin/mailman/listinfo/religionlaw Please note that messages sent to this large list cannot be viewed as private. Anyone can subscribe to the list and read messages that are posted; people can read the Web archives; and list members can (rightly or wrongly) forward the messages to others.
Circumcision
My answers here should also be informed by Marty's sensible third category of likely regret. But I'll limit myself to the two categories I tried to outline in my earlier post. (1) Tattooing: I don't like tattoos. I actually often find myself physically repulsed by them. My own religion forbids them. But if parents had a serious religious reason for tattooing their underage child (note that I'm limiting myself here to religious reasons), I would not want the state to intervene unless the tattooing were of a sort that involved severe pain or was likely to have genuinely harmful long-term physical, psychological, or sociological consequences for the child. (2) Sterliziation: The state could reasonably conclude that forcibly sterilizing a child produces the grave harm of eliminating that child's ability to make future reproductive choices. Here, the issue of competent consent is inextricably tied up with the procedure. Adults who have themselves sterilized are making a reproductive choice; children who are sterilized without their consent are deprived of all future such choices. (3) Pregnancy: It does seem to me that society could reasonably conclude that pregnancy by a 14-year-old is developmentally inappropriate for both physical and psychological reasons. To be sure, we should respect the kid's autonomous rights in this context, at least to the extent of, for example, not allowing either the state or the kid's parents to force her to have an abortion. But, as Eugene emphasizes, that doesn't mean that we do or should excuse the culpable role that others might play in getting the kid pregnant. Obviously, one of the issues in all these comparisons is my sense that circumcision is not as big a deal as some would suggest. Apart from its religious significance for many folks, it does seem to have serious health benefits, including but limited to helping to prevent HIV infection, which is why there's a major campaign in parts of Africa to have as many men as possible sterilized. Moreover, it clearly does not eliminate sexual sensitivity or gratification, or even reduce it to the extent that millions upon millions of circumcised men are heard lamenting their fate. Indeed, the jury is out as to whether it has any real effect on sexual sensitivity or gratification at all. And even if it did lead to some small reduction in sheer physical sensitivity, that would strike me as only dubiously relevant: it assumes that the quality of sex is tied in a purely linear way to the quantity of a particular physical stimulus. Add to all this the point I made earlier: To the extent that the act of circumcision itself is potentially disturbing or physically complicated for the one being circumcised, that's much more true for adults than for eight-day-year-old baby boys. Let me, though, throw out a hypothetical of my own. Say that baby is born with a very large and very visible and, by most lights, unsightly mole on his or her face. The mole poses no health risk to the child. But it is very ugly. The doctors tell the parents that they can remove the mole completely with very little risk to the child. Having the mole removed as an adult would be possible, but somewhat more complicated. In any event, if the procedure were put off, the child would grow up with the mole still on his or her face. The parents decide to have the mole removed (1) for aesthetic reasons and/or (2) because they're concerned that the sense of social identity or psychological health of the child will be impaired if they do not have the mole removed. Should the state intervene in this decision? Should it be entitled to? Would these parents' aesthetic and psychological concerns be more worthy of respect than the religious motives of parents who have their baby boys circumcised? Should it matter that the aesthetic judgment of the mole is culture-specific, or that in some other cultures such a mole would actually be thought to be a mark of great beauty? If a response to this hypo is that circumcision is different from mole-removal because it cuts off a sexually sensitive part of the body, then I can tweak the hypo slightly to assume the mole removal (1) will have a minimal negative consequence such as, say, ever-so-slightly blunting the kid's sense of smell, and (2) it will also have some positive medical consequences, such as reducing the risk of certain sorts of infections, and I can further assume that the parents, taking into account these facts in addition to their aesthetic and psychological concerns, still go ahead with asking the doctors to remove the mole. I'm not sure these tweaks change the equation very much. If, though, the answer is that circumcision is different simply because moles are defects while foreskins are natural parts of the male human body, that reaction would strike me as just physically essentialist. What if the aformentioned mole weren't all that rare, but actually appeared on 5% of babies, but almost all parents in a given culture
Re: Circumcision
ok Paul Finkelman President William McKinley Distinguished Professor of Law Albany Law School 80 New Scotland Avenue Albany, NY 12208 518-445-3386 (p) 518-445-3363 (f) paul.finkel...@albanylaw.edu www.paulfinkelman.com From: Perry Dane d...@crab.rutgers.edu To: religionlaw@lists.ucla.edu Sent: Thursday, July 12, 2012 6:07 PM Subject: Circumcision My answers here should also be informed by Marty's sensible third category of likely regret. But I'll limit myself to the two categories I tried to outline in my earlier post. (1) Tattooing: I don't like tattoos. I actually often find myself physically repulsed by them. My own religion forbids them. But if parents had a serious religious reason for tattooing their underage child (note that I'm limiting myself here to religious reasons), I would not want the state to intervene unless the tattooing were of a sort that involved severe pain or was likely to have genuinely harmful long-term physical, psychological, or sociological consequences for the child. (2) Sterliziation: The state could reasonably conclude that forcibly sterilizing a child produces the grave harm of eliminating that child's ability to make future reproductive choices. Here, the issue of competent consent is inextricably tied up with the procedure. Adults who have themselves sterilized are making a reproductive choice; children who are sterilized without their consent are deprived of all future such choices. (3) Pregnancy: It does seem to me that society could reasonably conclude that pregnancy by a 14-year-old is developmentally inappropriate for both physical and psychological reasons. To be sure, we should respect the kid's autonomous rights in this context, at least to the extent of, for example, not allowing either the state or the kid's parents to force her to have an abortion. But, as Eugene emphasizes, that doesn't mean that we do or should excuse the culpable role that others might play in getting the kid pregnant. Obviously, one of the issues in all these comparisons is my sense that circumcision is not as big a deal as some would suggest. Apart from its religious significance for many folks, it does seem to have serious health benefits, including but limited to helping to prevent HIV infection, which is why there's a major campaign in parts of Africa to have as many men as possible sterilized. Moreover, it clearly does not eliminate sexual sensitivity or gratification, or even reduce it to the extent that millions upon millions of circumcised men are heard lamenting their fate. Indeed, the jury is out as to whether it has any real effect on sexual sensitivity or gratification at all. And even if it did lead to some small reduction in sheer physical sensitivity, that would strike me as only dubiously relevant: it assumes that the quality of sex is tied in a purely linear way to the quantity of a particular physical stimulus. Add to all this the point I made earlier: To the extent that the act of circumcision itself is potentially disturbing or physically complicated for the one being circumcised, that's much more true for adults than for eight-day-year-old baby boys. Let me, though, throw out a hypothetical of my own. Say that baby is born with a very large and very visible and, by most lights, unsightly mole on his or her face. The mole poses no health risk to the child. But it is very ugly. The doctors tell the parents that they can remove the mole completely with very little risk to the child. Having the mole removed as an adult would be possible, but somewhat more complicated. In any event, if the procedure were put off, the child would grow up with the mole still on his or her face. The parents decide to have the mole removed (1) for aesthetic reasons and/or (2) because they're concerned that the sense of social identity or psychological health of the child will be impaired if they do not have the mole removed. Should the state intervene in this decision? Should it be entitled to? Would these parents' aesthetic and psychological concerns be more worthy of respect than the religious motives of parents who have their baby boys circumcised? Should it matter that the aesthetic judgment of the mole is culture-specific, or that in some other cultures such a mole would actually be thought to be a mark of great beauty? If a response to this hypo is that circumcision is different from mole-removal because it cuts off a sexually sensitive part of the body, then I can tweak the hypo slightly to assume the mole removal (1) will have a minimal negative consequence such as, say, ever-so-slightly blunting the kid's sense of smell, and (2) it will also have some positive medical consequences, such as reducing the risk of certain sorts of infections, and I can further assume that the parents, taking into account
