From: petel@sequent.com (Pete Lancashire)
Subject: Re: Circum.: When Parents Disagree : -(
Organization: Sequent Computer Systems, Inc.
Date: Thu, 21 Jan 93 05:38:11 GMT

daved@convex.com (David Dorfman) writes:

>In <C14J4p.D8K@tsoft.net> casper@tsoft.net (Johanne Kaminski) writes:


>>take a perfectly healthy and beautiful baby boy and have a healthy part 
>>of that child's body chopped off!

>term and the correct description of the procedure. It lowers the chance 
>of penile cancer and is a basically painless procedure.

Please show me the data. And the pain or painless, so what.

> Later in life the
>emotional repercussions and pain of circumcision are much greater and
>some uncircumcised me[n] are forced to undergo the prcedure due to recurring
>urinary tract infections.

Again the data please. Please show me some data from Europe or Canada.

>>We are guardians and caretakers of our children, but we do not own them nor
>>their bodies. I don't see where anyone has the right to take the healthy
>>body of a child and mutilate it without that child's informed concent.
>>It is your child's penis, and not the husband's penis to do what he feels
>>like doing.

>This is your opinion, actually the fact that the child has no idea what is 
>happening at all makes circumsision possible.

What do you base this on. Most nural's will now disagree.

There is no way I would subject
>my son to the procedure if he had any awareness of his surroundings. The
>procedure occurs during the first week of the childs life.

See above.

>If you really believe the 2 day old baby can give informed consent i must
>admit this is a new concept to me.

No he can't, good reason not to do it.

>I have a hard time taking this seriously, but as a circumcised male I don't
>even have a glimmer of feeling about having my foreskin removed. For some 
>reason I sense you are trying to find something that might not exist.

Or could.

>As the guardian of my childs emotional well being I felt he would be best
>served by being just like the other little boys and his dad. Kids normally
>don't want to be different, they want to fit in and be like the other kids,
>and most boys in america are circumcised. If you ever watched a circumcision you
>would know it is a 20 minute procedure during which the baby might cry simply
>because he is being restrained. 

Or scream his guts out. I've seen it.

>There are truely some things about being a women a man can never understand.
>And there are truely some things about being a man that a women can never understand
>I would say that one of these things is how a man feels about his penis.

How about leave the kid alone and when he is 12 or 13 ask him.

>I assume you will not have your son's wisdom teeth removed if they become 
>impacted? 

Or 'might be' mine are no, I still have them.

>>A circumcised father might say, "IF it was good enough for me, it's good 
>>enough for my son" (yes, but which would truly be BETTER for his son), or 
>>"I don't need or miss my foreskin" (ah yes, but he was never really given a
>>chance to see whether he would have preferred to be left intact),  but those
>>are not good enough reasons to take away from the son what was taken away
>>from the father.

>Actually my thinking was more like, I want my son to be just like me so he
>will feel more secure in this world. And I plan to set a good example for him
>in every other way.


Or is it you do not feel secure. Come on, I was not cir'ed, kids would
say things to me, but I just felt that I was lucky I still had something
they didn't. I remember at summer camp saying that to one kid. That
shut him up. Screwed up the rest of his summer !!!

>>Have any of these circumcised father who want their little boys to be 
>>"just like them" talked to fathers and sons who were not the same in this
>>matter (ie, one is uncircumcised, the other is not).  If they did I 
>>would presume that they would find it was neither a problem, nor a big deal.

>Your right there, it isn't a big deal, either way.

So why not let the kid decide ?

-pete
Pete Lancashire
petel@sequent.com
Newsgroups: misc.kids