Routine Infant Male Circumcision

First I will go through my opponent's arguments, then into my own. But first, I would like to say that it is sad that there are no sources for any of these claims, many of which are quite extreme. Since I did not and don't plan on making any of the arguments that were in the first half of my opponent's R2, I need not address them. So I will go into my opponent's arguments now. "1) Disallowing female circumcision yet allowing male circumcision is discriminatory protection under the law, which is something that many find wrong." This argument is a strawman. Clitoridectomy is legal in USA, so the claim of discrimination is completely false. "2) An infant cannot consent to having such a thing done, and it will impact him for life IF he lives through it." First, there is the bold assertation that it is highly dangerous (implied by the last half of the statement). I'd also like to point out that in the OP, my opponent clearly stated, "This is... not about potential threats that may devolop later... not about if an infection or such has occurred." It seemed clear based on the OP that this was about the right of choice, not the health concerns. As for the first part of the statement. An infant cannot legally concent to anything, that is why they have legal guardians. As far as the law is concerned, concent from a legal guardian is legit. Now, if we want to dip into libertarian rights, I will be covering that in my arguments, so I will save it for there rather than repeat myself. "3) If one considers late term abortion wrong under the pretense that it is a living being that is human, and it has human-like rights, then it is illogical to also support circumcision." First, right to life is seperate than rights of consent. Second, abortion is not the topic of debate here and doesn't really have any merit on the rights of a child or their mother. "4) There are many kinds of rights that each person has, however the most common one is the right to their own property. A human has an innate right to their own body under property rights. Evidence can easily be found in laws against rape, murder, and other acts of violence against a person." If we are using the written laws as our measuring tools, we can also find laws against drug use, drinking and driving, and suicide. Thus indicating that the law does not grant 100% rights to one's own body, but instead grants partial rights to one's own body. This, coupled with the legal guardian rights, show that parents have the right to make that choice for their children. The only way around this is to use something other than our law as the measuring stick, this is often liberarian rights. I will go into how libertarian rights actually support the mother over the child in my arguments. "5) If the mother can choose to have the foreskin removed, why would she not be allowed to "declaw" her children?" That's begging the question. The removal of fingernails and toenails from individuals is legal. I've had it done several times (though for medical reasons). "6) Death caused by circumcision often goes unreported, however evidence suggests that the number is rather large." Apart from the OP, which implied that this was not about safety or health concerns, there is no link to back this up. And even from the most bais source I can find, it only says that 100 die a year [1]. This comes out to about 4.12 death's per 100,000 (based on birthrate and circumcision rate [2]), compared to the SID rate of 687 per 100,000 [3]. There is, statistically, 165 times greater risk of SIDs than death from circumcision. "7) When you are an infant anesthetic is rarely used when circumcision is preformed..." This has no barring on whether or not the parents have the right to do so or not. "8) So many try to go through restoration to get their foreskin back..." Neither does this. "9) In other countries with much lower rates of infant circumcision, very few want to get it done" And neither does this. Now I will move on to my arguments. In order to determine whether the parents have the right to make this choice for the children or not is entirely dependent upon what type of rights system you place value into. I will look at two different rights systems, our current system (in the US) and the libertarian system (since my opponent self labels herself as libertarian, and as most members on this site suscribes to the libertarian rights, this seems the most logical choice). 1) In our current rights system, those under the age of 18 do not have the right of consent, and so must have a legal guardian provide consent (this applies to anything, from school field trips, to medical procedures). If the parent is the legal guardian, then that have that right, according to our current system. No more really needs to be said about that. 2) According to the libertarian rights system, all persons have the right of self-ownership, regardless of age. This seems to imply that the choice should be up to the child, however, we must first look at how libertarians define "person." Ayn Rand in particular, defines human as "a rational animal" and uses this measuring tool for what has the right of self-ownership [4]. Many others have attempted to define "what is a person" and it continues to be a philosophical debate. However, there are some features which are common between many philosophers, especially in the libertarian leanings. Of those includes the capacity for rational thought [5]. If we focus on that, we can come to something quite interesting. It should come as no shock that the human baby is not born with the skill of rationalization (but in case you didn't know that [6][7][8]), and so, by libertarian rights, a new born baby is not a "person." Since it is not a person, it does not have the rights of a person, which means that it doesn't have the right to self-ownership. A baby will not get this right until it become capable of rational thought. That brings us to a different question. If the baby does not own itself, who the heck owns it? According to the libertarian principle of homesteading, the individual that made the baby is the legitimate owner of that baby (until the baby becomes self-aware and so self-owning). This means that the mother has EVERY RIGHT to decide if the baby should have a circumcision or not, since the baby is her property according to libertarian rights. Of course, my opponent is free to suggest a different code of rights to use, however to do so would require rationalizing why that code ought be used and not any other. Thank you, [1] http://www.icgi.org... [2] http://www.cirp.org... [3] http://www.sidscenter.org... [4] http://aynrandlexicon.com... [5] http://muse.jhu.edu... [6] http://main.zerotothree.org... [7] http://faculty.washington.edu... [8] http://www.ces.ncsu.edu...