From Truthdig (Oct. 15, 2015) comes this interesting review of recently enacted legislation in the state of California.
These are all great. Unfortunately, California also leads the nation in reactionary legislation when it comes to human rights and genital autonomy. To my knowledge, California is the only state in the union with a state-wide ban (signed by Governor Brown in 2011) on local ordinances that would regulate, restrict, or ban male genital mutilation (forced non-therapeutic penile circumcision). That would be like New York City banning female genital mutilation (if it weren't already banned by a federal statute) only to have the State of New York supersede the law with a statewide statute prohibiting localities from banning FGM.
Let's compare the progressive laws cited in this article with California's position regarding the right of infants with penises not to be subjected to genital mutilation.
1)Abortion and the state's crackdown on phony abortion clinics: The right to obtain a safe and legal abortion rests on the same legal and ethical foundation as the right of the individual to decide for himself what parts of his body he gets to keep. If denying a woman the right to control her own body violates her right of bodily autonomy, how does denying a male or intersex infant the same right constitute any less a violation of his rights?
2)The Right to Die: This is closely related to abortion rights: in other words, the right of bodily autonomy. What is more central to that right than being protected from a harmful and potentially lethal genital surgery imposed upon one without his consent?
3)Equal pay: This legislation rests on the principle of treating both sexes equally. Yet female genital mutilation is illegal in California whereas male genital mutilation is not. And, as noted above, California law goes even further in facilitating the human rights violation of male genital mutilation by explicitly preventing localities within the state from protecting male and intersex infants from nonconsensual and medically unnecessary genital surgery.
4)Environmental regulations: The reason we have environmental regulations is because history as demonstrated that, without them, polluters pollute even more than they do with them. At the same time, epidemiological research has also shown that pollution of the air, soil, and water harms human health. Ultimately, therefore, environmental regulations exist in order to protect human health. The focus of the recently enacted environmental regulations cited in this article is clean- and renewable energy, but the goal of renewable energy, too, is ultimately to keep our planet hospitable to human (and other) life which, on the most basic level, is a public-health policy concern. Yet amputating a healthy body part (aside from the inherent risks of any surgery) is manifestly unhealthy for the individual subjected to the amputation. The male prepuce - like its homologous counterpart in females, the clitoral hood - has evolved over millions of years because it is functional and anatomically important. The male prepuce is the most sensitive erogenous tissue of the penis and its amputation necessarily diminishes the male's ability to experience full penile sensation as an adult. In addition, the male prepuce has many other functions, including protecting the infant from infection during early childhood (throughout which the prepuce remains fused to the glans). Thus, its removal is harmful in and of itself - just like exposing someone to air pollution or water pollution is harmful.
5)The ban on the routine use of antibiotics in animals: the rationale behind this important and overdue legislation is that the indiscriminate and routine use of antibiotics has led to the evolution of drug-resistant microorganisms which, in turn, has harmed human health. Its purpose, then, is to protect human health. And, yet, non-therapeutic infant circumcision and "corrective" genital surgery on intersex infants also harm human health and far more seriously than drug-resistant strains of staph- or enterococcus do.
6)Legislation making undocumented children eligible for state-subsidized health insurance: This legislation is pro-child and pro-health. No child should be denied adequate health care simply because of the immigration status of her or his parents. This legislation, then, incorporates the principle that access to healthcare should not be denied on the basis of a child's legal status. But the very first principle of medicine is primum non nocere - "first, do no harm." Thus, before California subsidizes healthcare for minors, ought it not to insure that the healthcare that they receive is in accordance with medical best practices and medical ethics? Non-therapeutic penile circumcision, by definition, violates the most basic principles of healthcare. Hence, it is inconsistent for the state of California to take steps to promote childhood wellness while simultaneously permitting children with penises to be victimized by medical malpractice.
7)Voting rights: the new motor voter law advances the laudable objective of increasing citizens' participation in government and thus aims to facilitate the actual practice of democracy. And what, after all, is more directly democratic than ballot initiatives and citizen-driven referenda? And yet California has explicitly banned such referenda when it comes to protecting infant boys and intersex infants from genital cutting. Hence, this legislation, which appears to be progressive and pro-democratic on its face, amounts to the state legislature encouraging the residents of California to participate in the democratic process but not when doing so would protect male children from genital mutilation.
8)Gun control. This is simply another public health matter. Gun violence is epidemic in the U.S. and California is right to take this modest step toward curbing it. But genital mutilation is also a form of violence and it is also an epidemic, since more than one million infants are subjected to it annually in the United States. To its credit, California is at the low end of all the states insofar as the incidence of male genital mutilation is concerned. But while there are different degrees and kinds of violence, on some level violence is violence. Does it make sense for the state legislature of California to treat the right not to be injured or killed by a gun differently than the right not to be injured or killed by a scalpel or other genital-mutilating implement? After all, harm is harm, and violence is violence. And the right not to be shot and the right not to be subjected to genital mutilation arise from the same fundamental rights, namely, to be secure in one's person and free from harm and violence.
9)Ban on the offensive term "Redskins." Bravo! But what is the term "redskins" but a reflection of a type of bigotry based on ethnicity or race? And what is the practice of male genital mutilation and the state of California's statue forestalling citizen referenda to prevent it but a state-sanctioned form of cultural bias against males and male bodies? - A bias that defines the natural penis as something innately disgusting, disease-prone, ugly, offensive, and urgently in need of surgical modification at birth. A bias that defines males and male bodies as existing beyond the protection of constitutional rights and laws that protect only girls and women from physical harm to their genitals.
10)Medical Marijuana regulation: The author of this article construes this legislation as being significant largely insofar as it may be a precursor to the eventual decriminalization of marijuana. To the extent that it is, it advances two important principles: the ability of citizens to have access to a valid pharmacological agent in order to alleviate suffering and the more basic right of citizens to be free to use psychoactive substances recreationally without an unwarranted governmental proscription against their doing so. The relevant principles behind these laudable objectives are that health, wellness, and freedom from needless suffering are positive goods to which people have an innate right and that people should be autonomous and retain absolute ownership of their bodies, including what they do to their own bodies and what substances they put into their own bodies. But non-therapeutic circumcision violates both of these principles. It harms the individual's health and causes needless suffering while depriving him of the right of bodily autonomy. Hence, while the California legislature is forward-looking when it comes to marijuana, it is backward-looking when it comes to non-therapeutic circumcision and its violation of the right to bodily integrity and the right to bodily autonomy.
That may be said of every one of the new statutes discussed in Truthdig's article: they reveal a moral inconsistency on the part of California's legislature. One can only hope that as the state government moves ever closer toward a full incorporation into its statutes of the principles of beneficence, wellness, democracy, and respect for human rights, the moral gravitational pull of these principles will awaken in the hearts and minds of California's legislators the recognition that male genital mutilation represents the antithesis of these principles and thus, like female genital mutilation, should be banned.
About me: I am originally from New York City and now live near the Finger Lakes region of New York. I am a licensed physical therapist and I write about bodily autonomy and human rights, gender, culture, and politics. I currently serve on the board of directors for the Genital Autonomy Legal Defense & Education Fund, (GALDEF), the board of directors and advisors for Doctors Opposing Circumcision and the leadership team for Bruchim.
No comments:
Post a Comment