RT Journal Article
SR Electronic
T1 Circumcision of male infants as a human rights violation
JF Journal of Medical Ethics
JO J Med Ethics
FD BMJ Publishing Group Ltd and Institute of Medical Ethics
SP 469
OP 474
DO 10.1136/medethics-2012-101229
VO 39
IS 7
A1 J Steven Svoboda
YR 2013
UL http://jme.bmj.com/content/39/7/469.abstract
AB Every infant has a right to bodily integrity. Removing healthy tissue from an infant is only permissible if there is an immediate medical indication. In the case of infant male circumcision there is no evidence of an immediate need to perform the procedure. As a German court recently held, any benefit to circumcision can be obtained by delaying the procedure until the male is old enough to give his own fully informed consent. With the option of delaying circumcision providing all of the purported benefits, circumcising an infant is an unnecessary violation of his bodily integrity as well as an ethically invalid form of medical violence. Parental proxy ‘consent’ for newborn circumcision is invalid. Male circumcision also violates four core human rights documents—the Universal Declaration of Human Rights, the Convention on the Rights of the Child, the International Covenant on Civil and Political Rights, and the Convention Against Torture. Social norm theory predicts that once the circumcision rate falls below a critical value, the social norms that currently distort our perception of the practice will dissolve and rates will quickly fall.