Circumcision

I really don't understand Americans sometimes. I mean, I'm au fait with the arguments but I find myself unable to understand them in a Davidsonian sense because, try as I might, the only explanation I can come up with is that they justify contradictory traditions with a small amount of tolerance and a heaping helping of mauvaise foi.

Currently there's a debate about banning routine neo-natal male circumcision.

What's truly disturbing is how the newspapers are talking about the Free Exercise Clause of the First Amendment. The ban is only for minors, adults will still be free to get circumcised. But it seem's that that's not good enough for Americans because (a) They consider their children's bodies as chattels; and (b) They can't imagine that their children would later choose their own religion.

This is the only explanation I can see for why a country with such a large proportion arguing for a woman's right to control her own body would stand for this.

A few comments in that article complain that there are too many laws already. That's often the case, well-meaning people sometimes insist on making their cause a law when it's not necessary. In this case I guess you could argue that non-consentual circumcisions should be prosecuted as assaults but I'm sure there's too many reasons against this. Most obviously because 30-50% of American male babies are still being circumcised, so much more awareness would be needed (it would be unfair to take a widespread practice and deem it assault overnight but it wouldn't be unfair to ban it with some warning).

Unfortunately one of the campaigners has drawn a comic book attacking circumcision that comes off as anti-Jewish. I don't know whether he is or not. Certainly he makes mohels into villains but, given the theme, he's probably just attacking their practices, not their ethnicity, attacking them qua mutilators, not qua Jews. But it's no surprise that people assume that it's both. But even assuming that this one activist is racist, that doesn't mean the result he's after is the wrong one. People could be motivated to ban polygamy out of a hatred of Mormons and Muslims, that doesn't make it the wrong thing to do.

7th June
Here's an argument I had today with a Jewish friend:

M: Should it also be illegal to tie off umbilical cords? Who knows? Maybe that hurts a baby. For other medical procedures, it is the parent who decides for the minor--why not circumcision? especially because it is known to provide health benefits to the child which is why it has become standard practice in american hospitals. also, you don't believe that this is just another attack on Muslims (and also Jews) in America by crazies on the right?

Nick: There are certainly many good reasons for all sorts of surgery. My point is that the reasoning should be entirely therapeutic, without regard to religious or secular traditions. (By secular tradition, I mean the fact that the USA is the only western country to perform the procedure because nowhere else do doctors see any health benefits. It's a Victorian tradition that has died out everywhere but here and Muslim countries.)
It's very sad that crazy people use serious issues to spite the ones they hate because it muddies the waters of what should be an ethical question, not an aesthetic one. The problem is, good people can argue for the right thing from good principles while at the same time hateful people argue for the same result from hateful principles. Then the good people have to waste time distancing themselves from the crazies and their serious message gets lost.
Nick: http://www.thehastingscenter.org/Bioethicsforum/Post.aspx?id=132
PS It really worries me that you think foreskins are similar to umbilical cords!

M: It really worries me that you and these other folks think that circumcision is some kind of mutilation. I'm not arguing that circumcision is a cure all or that it prevents HIV. It just seems that if being circumcised can enrich the life of a Jewish or Muslim baby and the procedure is not painful, why should anyone try to restrict the practice? We don't make piercing the ears of children illegal for the same reason.

Nick: Firstly, I don't accept your use of terms like "Muslim baby" as no baby can accept that Allah is the only god and Muhammad is his prophet. (I agree with Dawkins completely on this point, but I won't repeat his inflammatory language here.)
Nick: But if it makes you feel any better, I do think that there should be a minimum age for ear piercing. If you'd like to talk bioethics, maybe we should do piercing first, because most of the points are the same but there's much less at stake:
If you want to define terms, I'd happily extend a weak sense of "mutilation" to ear piercing because it certainly is non-therapeutic modification of the human body. (But it might be wiser to leave out emotionally laden language.)
In principle non-therapeutic body modification should never happen to anyone who doesn't/can't consent. When determining what constitutes consent, we could either take an absolute cut off for all things (18) or admit degrees of reason. I would suggest that the age of reason for ear piercing should be lower than for voting or for sex because it's reversible -- ear-lobes heal almost completely (just a little scar). I don't have strong views about where the age limit should be set but, at a guess, I'd say somewhere between 8 and 14. Likewise, if it were ever banned, I think that any penalty should be very mild, to reflect the fact it is reversible.
Other types of piercing are more complicated. In Australia, e.g., all genital piercing is banned for minors; parental consent does not give the child the right to have their genitals pierced by a professional. (I can only assume that the rationale in this case has more to do with the intimacy of the area and the higher risk of complications.) I imagine that there are some 16-year-olds who believe that their lives are less rich because of this nanny-state restriction but no adult thinks it's an infringement of their rights to make them wait a little.
Nick: Just to be clear -- this was not meant to be the male equivalent of a feminist rant against labiaplasty. I'm not trying to convince you, M., or anyone else to change your aesthetic preferences.
What I am trying to persuade you to do is, if you ever have a son, allow him to make this choice for himself.

M: There is such a thing as a Jewish baby and I have known some young men who were Jewish but not circumcised and it gave them a lot of anxiety. I would never put my own child through that. Second, I think that just because something is "nontherapeutic modification" doesn't mean it is harmful. And, I would argue that the rule against children getting genital piercings is more because children make stupid decisions rather than because their parents or families do. If there were non-harmful other forms of body modification required culturally or religiously I would also say that the benefits for the acquiring of such a modification outweigh the cost and from an ethical standpoint should not be medically restricted.
M: But, as we've discovered before, it is difficult for us to have a conversation because I am a cultural relativist from your perspective and you are a believer in one clear cut truth from my perspective.

I love arguments but it's rare that I have one about an important ethical issue so this one made me quite angry. "A Jewish baby" could only possibly mean that mitochondial DNA makes it ok. And her description of genital piercing being banned because kids do silly things misses the point that parental consent does not change it in that instance but I'll let that go because I recognise that her last comment gets to the nub of our disagreement, more or less.

I doubt I would have succeeded in persuading her if I hadn't pulled punches the way I did. I can leave the argument over cultural relativism for another day (she's not admitting that that's her position, so it'll be a long argument). The only thing I'd have liked to add would be to explain how docking of dogs' tails is illegal in NSW. That's a stronger point than genital piercing because, if you can't do these things to animals, you certainly shouldn't do them to humans.

Moral of the story: cultural moral relativism makes me angry when it has real world consequences.

8th June

R: Is there such a thing as a Republican baby? Or a Liberal baby? Or a Marxist baby?
R: M, pehaps giving the child as wide an education as possible while supporting any decision the child makes on religious, (or non), convictions combined with a parental backbone that supports your child even at the expense of one's own social isolation may be a better and more moral standpoint than hacking into a boy's penis without consent for no medical advantage whatsoever simply to please the neighbours. Wow, that was a loooong sentence. :D
R: Or possibly simply ask the hard questions, like: say, why is it so important that I take the foreskin off of my son? "Because God demands it", is simply not a good enough answer since God also demads slavery, genocide and stonings in the Old Testament and these have been dropped due to the arbitrary cruelty involved. So how is this different? And isn't it a parent's job to protect their child? It seems to me that your defence of this practice places a parent's responsibility of the congregation ahead of their responsibility to their child. And really, if abuse or shame is directed at the child because they haven't been circumcised, is it a rational, parental response to take to their child with a knife rather than remove them from the people orchastrating the grief and the shame? The poor child will feel guilt when we teach him that he SHOULD feel guilty and his parents don't stand up for him. The parents should be ashamed of themselves for their cowardice and for failing to prioritise their child above their own fear of social isolation. There is no way around it. People who defend this practice on the grounds on religion or culture are immoral and call into question their own fitness as parents.

M: Mr. R, sorry it has taken me so long to respond to you--It's been a holiday. So, Judaism is not just a set of beliefs like republicanism, marxism, etc. Religion is just one aspect of Judaism. It's also an ethnic, cultural and genetic group(s). The better, closer question would be more like, can there be a black baby? can there be an American, Australian, German baby? And, I think we'd both agree that the answer is yes, despite all of these categories being largely man-made.
M: Additionally, there seem to be several medical advantages (at least through corolation) including reduced risk of genital cancer as well as reduced risk for some sexually transmitted diseases. I'd also argue that a circumcision is not a cruelty--just as earpiercing (which is actually less acceptable by old testament standards (it's what you do to someone when their period of slavery is over and yet, they'd like to be a slave for life) or any other non-harmful body modification.
M: Finally, I don't think that many parents see their reasons for circumcising their children to be because "God demands it", in particular because so many people (in America) who get their children circumcised are neither Jews nor Muslims but Christians, who feel that the old testament laws have been succeeded by the faith offered as an alternative in the new testament. So, they are obviously choosing circumcision for other reasons. Within Judaism, however, "because God demands it" is never enough and reasons for, laws about, details regarding the practice and ceremony of circumcision have been debated, consulted, argued against, etc., for thousands of years. Speaking of which, since the practice is thousands of years old, and Jews are still around, as they've always been, why would anyone think that this process is harmful?

Nick: We could have a different argument based on circumcision as prophylaxis against certain conditions. I’d be quite happy to consider that because I’m all in favour of vaccination (which does carry some risks); I’m open to game-theory in bioethics. You’d have to weigh the severity of and likelihood of contracting those conditions that it’s supposed to prevent and how reliably it prevents them against the foreskin’s role protecting a very sensitive organ. Sure, in certain situations I could see circumcision as the lesser of two evils.
But based on the information I’ve seen, the foreskin has been treated the way tonsils were and, like tonsils, doctors in most countries have rethought circumcision. If a single bout of tonsillitis is not a good enough reason to remove tonsils, you should really think twice before cutting the foreskin off a perfectly healthy baby. (No one is talking about banning therapeutic circumcision.)
http://www.abc.net.au/tasmania/stories/s2004776.htm
Nick: I grew up in a family with a Jack Russell Terrier. We used to joke occasionally about her docked tail but when we researched the breed we learnt that this was an important feature of Jack Russells for practical reasons. Jack Russell and Fox Terriers were bred for hunting foxes and, after the hounds had chased them to ground, it was the terriers who would go down the hole after them. But they couldn’t dig their own way out, so the hunter would pull them out by the tail. A short stumpy tail is much less likely to get dislocated when pulled, so docking was for the dogs’ own good. Even though this wasn’t the reason our dog had her tail docked before we bought her, I freely admit that she didn’t seem adversely affected by having only half a tail (surely she couldn’t remember having a whole one).
Then, in 2004, a number of Australian states banned the docking of dogs’ tails and the cropping of their ears. (I would rank circumcision as less severe than tail docking because it’s soft tissue but worse than ear cropping because it leaves a sensitive organ exposed.) Many breeders objected that short tails and pointy ears were part of the definition of these breeds and that they’d been practising these traditions for hundreds of years. The government said “Tough!” and the general public is coming around to seeing docking and cropping as completely unnecessary (and potentially cruel).
If a government is willing to protect pets against unnecessary body modification, they should do even more to protect humans!
Nick: After our old dog died, my sister got another Jack Russell, with a long tail. I’ll admit, at first it looked weird when she wagged that long floppy tail. But the dog was no less loved and we all soon got used to having a long-tailed Jack Russell Terrier. The breeder we bought her from said that he’d stopped docking their tails well before the ban. That was probably difficult for him, having others look at his dogs and say that they’re not “real” Jack Russells. The universal ban must have been particularly good for him because it meant that the whole community of dog breeders was forced to change its standards. Some people call it “the nanny state”, I call it “moral leadership”.
I understand that property rights are strongly protected in America by that libertarian streak that comes out in everyone occasionally, so I know that cropping of animals’ ears won’t be banned here in the near future. But shifting the circumcision debate towards seeing infants as humans with rights is a move in the right direction. You make me wonder, M, how the arguments would run if there were a strictly non-religious ethnic group that thought it important to practise a tradition like circumcision on their infants. Judging from the predominance of “free practice” arguments in the newsmedia, I think Americans would be more willing to tell other ethnic groups that their practices need to change, no matter what their mitochondrial DNA might hold.

R: Religious beliefs are not genetic. There is no evidence to support that notion. It makes little sense to compare a "jewish' baby to a black one. A person can change their beliefs, they cannot change their skin colour. The most wonderful feature of a democracy is that a person has the right to reject and move away from the beliefs of their parents and the community in which they are raised. Religion actively undermines this blessing through indoctrinations legitimised by 'rites of passage' mumbo jumbo like circumcision. Also, to state that Judaism, (or any religious belief system), is unlike other, (say political) beliefs because of the community and culture that surrounds it, completely ignores such instances, (such as in the USSR and China), where a politcal belief has been enforced by a culture and community in much the same way that religious communities were set up in the 10th - 12th century. And sure, a baby can be legally declared 'Australian' or 'German' and this is a neccessary step in a world where realism in international relations theory is the norm so as to guarantee the rights that come with citizenship, (whatever they may be). But can you imagine the outcry if an Australian citizen ceremony came with a dozen lashes because, hey, after all, that's all part and parcel of Australian settlement history and therefore tradition? Also, if religion is a genetic issue, isn't it incredibly lucky that Jewish children seem ALWAYS to have Jewish parents! What a stroke of good fortune! I can't imagine how difficult it is for all those children in Iran living in Muslim families while struggling to suppress their inner Jew! Religion is also does not fall under an ethic umbrella. To subscribe to that notion, one would have to assume that the people of Tonga, now overwhelmingly Christian were simply playing around with religion until the missionaries arrived. So does Tongan=Christian? Or is it more accurate to say that many, (most?), Tongans identify themselves as Christians in 2011? What's the difference? It's all in the way we view individual human beings. For if we can simply group people at the moment they are born and before they get a chance to make their own choices, we have removed free will from their lives and that flies in the face of both religious belief and secular human rights.
R: Neither the Australian Medical Association nor the American Medical Association agree that circumcision have any medical benefits at all. It's purpose was never medical. The medical arguments, (all now discredited), were simply rationalisations by 'loose' Christians as to why the practice should be continued. Often, fathers would have it done to their sons simply because it was done to them and they didn't want their son to be teased. We also now don't tolerate slavery, so any argument based on its use in biblical times is simply anachronistic to the 21st century, as is the circumcision argument as a whole. M, the assertion that the Jews are still here so therefore it can't be harmful is just plain silly. Millions of African women undergo female circumcision each year and have done so four thousands of years and yet they're still around. Is that okay? Other religions have been killing Jews for sport for thousands of years but they managed to survive as a race. So is this acceptable too? Do accept this on the basis on the survivability on the race again overlooks to rights and trials of the individual. In both cases, individual lives, and the lives of their families, were ruined. There have also been plenty of individual deaths due to circumcision, even in the USA, when rabbis infect babies via the germs in their mouths. So why would anyone think it is harmful? Evidence.