Meatless Mondays, Oprah Winfrey, and the Humane Society of the United States

by David Balashinsky

Wayne Pacelle, the CEO of the Humane Society of the United States, recently announced on his organization's Facebook page that Oprah Winfrey has endorsed the Meatless Mondays movement.  In a post that also links to his appearance with Winfrey on SuperSoul Sunday, Pacelle writes, 

The big news coming out of my appearance with Oprah Winfrey on SuperSoul Sunday today is that she took the “Meatless Mondays” pledge and asked her 33.5 million Twitter followers to follow suit. Incredible, high impact, game-changing stuff. On today’s show, she showed such facility for the cause and a great shared passion for fighting for animals, in ways large and small. It’s great to have this amazing woman on our side. 

I write as a long-time supporter of the HSUS when I say that I am deeply disappointed to see it compromise its principles by associating itself with Oprah Winfrey.  Yes, Winfrey - to her credit - now endorses the Meatless Mondays movement.  I applaud her for that.  But this is the same Oprah Winfrey who has gone on national television and shilled for SkinMedica, a company that manufactures anti-wrinkle face cream that is made from a line of fibroblasts harvested from the prepuce of an infant who, in all likelihood, was subjected to a non-therapeutic circumcision - a totally unnecessary genital-modification surgery that permanently removes a normal, sensitive and functional body part, causes infants excruciating pain, violates their right of bodily integrity, kills over 100 of them and leaves over one million more scarred for life in the United States every year.  Of course, its use in the "beauty cream" industry may be only one of a number of uses to which the genetic material obtained from severed infant prepuces are put but it is easily the most ethically egregious.  It strikes me as morally inconsistent to oppose an industry that exploits animals and causes them needless suffering while, at the same time, supporting an industry that exploits human infants and causes them needless suffering.  Likewise, to refrain from meat consumption on ethical grounds while applying to one's own skin a "beauty cream" that has been manufactured from skin that was stolen from another person.  Yet this is what Oprah Winfrey is now doing.

Winfrey's hypocrisy (a strong but entirely apt word to use in this context) - has been noted by human rights advocates who have rhetorically questioned whether she would similarly endorse beauty products manufactured with the excised genital tissue of girls, given Winfrey's opposition to the practice of FGM.  (I applaud her for that, too.)  Win- frey's double standard regarding the right to bodily integrity of children with penises is thrown into relief more generally by her robust advocacy on behalf of protecting children.  (And I applaud her for that, too.)  But perhaps it is thrown into sharpest relief by her involvement in bringing the tragic story of Henrietta Lacks and the so-called HeLa cell line to the attention of a wide television audience.  Reporting for the Times on Winfrey's movie adaptation of Rebecca Skloot's The Immortal Life of Henrietta Lacks, Salamishah Tillet writes, 

HeLa emerged as one of the most widely used lines in medical research and helped establish the multibillion-dollar vaccine industry, cancer treatment and in vitro fertilization industry.  This was all done without the knowledge of, consent from or any compensation paid to Lacks's family as it struggled with racism and poverty in Baltimore. 

Winfrey not only stars in this adaptation but served as an executive producer.  What is striking here is that the ethical dimension of the misappropriation of Lacks's cells - that is, harvesting them and profiting from them without her consent - is identical to that of SkinMedica's use of fibroblasts obtained from a neonate's amputated prepuce without his consent and without any compensation to him.  In response to the controversy regarding the source of fibroblasts for its "beauty products," the founder of SkinMedica, Dr. Richard Fitzpatrick, has pointed out (as paraphrased by Bruce Demara in The Star) that "the cells are grown from a single foreskin obtained more than 20 years ago."  This makes the theft of that individual's cellular material certainly no better ethically than the theft of Lacks's cellular material, a theft that occurred more than 70 years ago.  In fact, it was almost certainly much worse.  Lack's cells were harvested while she underwent potentially life-saving surgery (to remove her cervical cancer) and she consented to the surgery itself, if not to the harvesting and use of her tissue sample for biomedical research.  In contrast, the infant from whom the tissue sample was harvested - and that ultimately was used to make SkinMedica's beauty cream - never consented to the surgical amputation of his prepuce, nor was the surgery, in all probability, medically indicated (since neonatal circumcision is virtually never medically indicated).

The HSUS, as well as many other animal-welfare and animal-rights organizations, has long deplored the use of animals in cosmetics testing not merely because the animals subjected to these tests experience horrific pain but because the tests themselves are absolutely unnecessary.  As unethical as such testing is to begin with, this routine exploitation of animals becomes even more conspicuously unethical when it is done for no more noble a purpose than to gratify human vanity (at best) and to profit from the reinforcement of gender stereotypes (at worst).  Yet how is using part of an infant's penis for essentially the same purpose and without the infant's consent ethically any better?

As Pacelle himself has written, 

As harsh as nature is for animals, cruelty comes only from human hands.  We are the creature of conscience, aware of the wrongs we do and fully capable of making things right.  Our best instincts will always tend in that direction. . . . [The Bond: Our Kinship With Animals, Our Call to Defend Them by Wayne Pacelle; published by William-Morrow/Harper-Collins; 2011; the quotations included here are all taken from excerpts from Pacelle's book that appear on the HSUS website.]

As I understand him, Pacelle is arguing here from the morally unambiguous (if overly optimistic) position that, because human beings have the capacity to entertain the notion of ethics, we have not only a duty but even an innate impulse to act ethically.  The focus of Pacelle's mission is to call humanity to a better version of itself and to be guided in our treatment of animals by the same standards of rectitude and compassion that we would like to believe guide us in our treatment of our fellow human beings.  This moral imperative is especially compelling when, as Pacelle puts it, it obliges us to uphold "the decent and honorable code that makes us care for creatures who are entirely at our mercy."  

I would argue that the phrase "creatures who are entirely at our mercy" also describes, at least insofar as how we should treat them, infants who are both incapable of giving consent to and physically unable to defend themselves against cosmetic genital surgery.   Pacelle continues:

Especially within the last 200 years, we've come to apply an industrial mindset to the use of animals, too often viewing them as if they were nothing but articles of commerce, the raw material of science, or mere obstacles in the path of our own progress.  Here, as in other pursuits, human ingenuity has a way of outrunning human conscience, and some things we do only because we can - forgetting to ask whether we should.

Observations, criticisms, and questions that in many ways parallel Pacelle's with respect to the industrialized exploitation of animals are at the very heart of the genital autonomy movement: a movement that seeks to end the medically unwarranted but culturally normalized practices of involuntary penile circumcision, female genital mutilation and the non-therapeutic binary sex-assignment surgery to which intersex children routinely have been subjected.  Particularly with respect to non-consensual penile circumcision and the use for financial gain of the genital tissue obtained from it, I can think of no more fitting a description than Pacelle's trenchant observation that "as in other pursuits, human ingenuity has a way of outrunning human conscience, and some things we do only because we can - forgetting to ask whether we should." 

Subjecting an infant to a medically unnecessary and irreversible amputation of part of his genitals is unethical.  To then profit from the use of that infant's stolen body part in the manufacture of "beauty cream" as SkinMedica does is, by orders of magnitude, even more unethical: it is a moral abomination.  And because Oprah Winfrey has enthusiastically promoted this practice and this product, I cannot think of a poorer choice as a spokesperson for the Meatless Mondays movement.

Postscripts: When this essay was originally published, Wayne Pacelle was the CEO of the Humane Society of the United States.  He has since resigned from that position.  After initially voting to retain Pacelle - a vote that prompted seven of its members to resign in protest - the HSUS's board of directors issued a statement implicitly condemning Pacelle for having violated the organization's sexual harassment policy and naming Kitty Block, a longtime HSUS staff attorney, as acting President and CEO.

Note also that this essay has been revised (on 6 May 2018) in order to address the circumstance of Winfrey's subsequent involvement in bringing the saga of Henrietta Lacks's stolen genetic material to the screen.  It was further revised on 5 December 2022.

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.

Where They Stand: Straddling the Great Divide Between Forced Circumcision and Pain-Prevention in Neonates

by David Balashinsky

Earlier this year, the American Academy of Pediatrics published a revised policy statement regarding procedural pain in neonates.  The very first recommendation, as it appears in the Abstract section of the new policy statement  is this: "The prevention of pain in neonates should be the goal of all pediatricians and health care professionals who work with neonates. . . ."  In the Background section, the revised policy also states, in part, "The prevention and alleviation of pain in neonates . . . is important not only because it is ethical but also because exposure to repeated painful stimuli early in life is known to have short- and long-term adverse sequelae."  The AAP's policy also states (again, returning to the Abstract): "every health care facility caring for neonates should implement . . . a pain-prevention program that includes strategies for minimizing the number of painful procedures performed. . . ."  

It should go without saying that the starting point for "preventing or minimizing pain" is avoiding unnecessary pain in the first place. That being the case, it would be interesting to know how the AAP reconciles its humane and commonsense recommendations regarding neonatal pain prevention with its continued support for male genital mutilation (also known as nontherapeutic circumcision or, simply, forced circumcision, since I am referring here only to circumcisions that are imposed, literally, by force, on neonates).

Forced circumcision, which is still routinely practiced in the United Sates (in contrast to most of the developed world) and which is overwhelmingly practiced here for reasons of custom or cosmesis, is a medically unnecessary surgery that violates the four most basic and important principles of medical ethics.  First, not to do harm.  Second, not to provide a treatment in the absence of a medical problem (such as a disease or harmful congenital deformity). Third, to opt for the least invasive or aggressive treatment available when there is a disease or other medical problem.  And, fourth, to obtain consent from the patient before rendering care unless the patient is incapable of providing consent and the treatment is required urgently to save life or limb. Forced circumcision violates every one of these principles.  Moreover, every one of the "health benefits" on the basis of which forced circumcision is rationalized can be achieved through the use of non-painful and non-invasive means, such as the practice of basic hygiene, the use of a condom in order to prevent the spread of STIs, or the use of antibiotics or other non-painful and minimally invasive treatments when a pathological condition, such as a UTI for example, does occur - in other words, exactly the same prophylactic and remedial approaches to genitourinary health as are employed with girls.  (Even something as simple as not smoking has been proven to have a greater effect upon reducing a man's chances of developing penile cancer than circumcision has.)  

Above and beyond all this, forced circumcision causes extreme pain and distress to the neonate who is subjected to it.  For generations, forced circumcision was routinely performed without any pain-relief whatsoever in the absurd belief that infants are incapable of experiencing pain. Today, with over one million forced circumcisions still performed annually in the United States, the application of adequate or even any pain relief is by no means universal nor is it mandated by law.  By some estimates, even now, only 25% of children who are subjected to circumcision receive adequate anesthesia.

The AAP concedes that "existing scientific evidence is not sufficient to recommend routine circumcision."  And yet, lacking sufficient evidence-based medical justification for nontherapeutic circumcision, the position of the AAP, as articulated in its most recent policy statement (2012) is that "the final decision should still be left to parents to make in the context of their religious, ethical and cultural beliefs."  Note that, in this statement, the AAP, an organization of medical professionals that professes to be "dedicated to the health, safety, and well being of infants," is defending a painful and medically unnecessary surgery on the basis of "religious, ethical, and cultural beliefs."  Yet how is subjecting male infants to circumcision for cultural or religious reasons ethically any different from subjecting girls to "female circumcision," which is also performed for cultural and religious reasons?  Defenders of forced circumcision in the United States are quick to claim that male genital cutting and female genital cutting are fundamentally dissimilar - but isn't this just an example of cultural arrogance?   It amounts to claiming "It's okay when we do it."  But it is merely the distorting lens of their own cultural context that makes these two practices appear to be fundamentally different to supporters of male genital cutting.  In a culture in which neonatal male circumcision has been normalized but female genital cutting has not, the two practices are simply judged by different yardsticks.  Yet there is no rational scientific or medical basis for hypothesizing and studying the potential health benefits of surgical modification to male genitalia while denying, a priori, any comparable health benefits of surgical modification to female genitalia.  

This raises an important question:  If studies were to suggest that the "benefits" of female genital cutting outweigh the "risks," would the AAP likewise endorse "access to this procedure for families who choose it" (to use the AAP's parlance)?  That is not a farfetched hypothetical question.  In Egypt, where female genital cutting remains common, its defenders include physicians who claim, just as the AAP does on behalf of forced male circumcision, that female circumcision is medically justified.  It is probably not a coincidence that female circumcision is now, in the 21st century, increasingly becoming "medicalized" (that is, performed in hospitals under aseptic conditions and justified on medical grounds) just as male circumcision became medicalized in Great Britain and North America in the 19th century and is now becoming medicalized in Africa. (Indeed, one might very reasonably speculate that those who defend female circumcision have shrewdly taken a page from the AAP's playbook.)   Nor can it be mere coincidence that the "benefits" that are claimed of female circumcision closely parallel the claims that are routinely made in defense of male circumcision, including "improved aesthetics and hygiene."  

The inescapable conclusion of all this is that the AAP endorses what is essentially a cultural practice that harms infants and causes them excruciating pain needlessly even as it acknowledges that there is insufficient medical evidence to support routine infant circumcision (RIC) and even though, as the AAP now acknowledges in its latest policy statement on neonatal pain management, "there are significant research gaps regarding the assessment, management, and outcomes of neonatal pain; and there is a continuing need for studies evaluating the effects of neonatal pain and pain-prevention strategies on long-term neurodevelopmental, behavioral, and cognitive outcomes."

Yet as controversial as nontherapeutic circumcision is, there remains one fact about it that is not in dispute that, to my knowledge, the AAP has not addressed.  This is that no infant ever consents to his own circumcision (which is why it is inaccurate not to call it what it is: forced circumcision).  Consider again the AAP's policy statement that "the procedure's benefits justify access to this procedure for families who choose it" (my emphasis).  But, of course, it is not "families" who choose circumcision but parents.  The individual himself  - the one who is actually subjected to genital cutting and, therefore, the only person whose opinion should actually matter - has no say at all.  But by what right of parental authority is it ethical or appropriate for a parent to order the medically unnecessary amputation of a part of his or her child's body?  And by what principle of medical ethics does the AAP endorse such an absolute parental prerogative?  Throughout the AAP's deliberations regarding its official stance on circumcision, how much weight was given to the right of the individual himself not to have part of his penis amputated without his consent?  Where is the AAP's recognition that every human being is born with an innate and inviolable right to ownership and control of his own body?   Infants, after all, do not remain infants forever. Circumcision, on the other hand, is permanent.  (And, of course, there is absolutely nothing to prevent an intact adult male from choosing for himself  to undergo a circumcision once he is old enough to weigh for himself the costs and potential benefits of circumcision.)  Where is the acknowledgement by the AAP that the man the circumcised infant will one day become may object to having had a functional and erogenous part of his penis amputated on the basis of nothing more substantial than an amalgamation of superstitions, cultural norms, religious beliefs, specious and, at best, tenuous medical justifications?  Was there ever even a passing consideration by the AAP's task force on circumcision  that that man may prefer to have experienced life with his body whole and his penis intact?   

The AAP equivocates about the "risks" of circumcision (while conceding that no one actually knows for certain what those risks are) yet refuses to acknowledge even now that forced circumcision is a harm in and of itself.  If the AAP's refusal to recognize this fact is predicated on its dismissal of the functions and importance of the male prepuce (including its essential role in sexual sensation as well as its functional role during coitus), it is predicated even more fundamentally on the AAP's total disregard of the right of the individual to decide for himself which parts of his body are important to him -  and to decide for himself which parts of his body he gets to keep and which parts get cut off. 

It's time for the AAP to live up to the lofty ideals of its professed mission "to attain optimal physical, mental, and social health and well-being for all infants, children, adolescents and young adults."  The AAP has an ethical duty to protect children; that ethical duty is incumbent upon each of its members, as well.  That duty includes refraining from subjecting neonates to painful and unnecessary surgeries, especially a surgery that results in the permanent loss of a functional and sensitive body part that every neonate, every infant, every child, every adolescent, and every man has a right to retain for as long as he, himself, chooses to keep it.  Revising its policy on forced circumcision so as to bring it into conformity with the AAP's recent policy statement on neonatal pain-prevention - to say nothing of bringing it into conformity with the core principles of medical ethics and into conformity with a respect for the fundamental human right of every individual to physical integrity - would immediately bring the AAP a long way toward realizing its stated goal of "preventing or minimizing pain in neonates."

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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.

A Short Critique of the Women's Gymnastics Floor Routine

by David Balashinsky

I love gymnastics.  And I love women's gymnastics.  However, I have long been bothered by the sexism and the conspicuous gender construction of the women's gymnastics floor routine. The mincing and prancing and the striking of quasi-sexual poses that seem to have become de rigueur during the past several decades makes the event excruciatingly awkward to watch.  What ought to be a demonstration of athletic prowess and  aesthetic beauty is needlessly debased by the gratuitous sexualization of these women athletes.  Could you imagine male gymnasts performing like this?  Gymnastics is gymnastics.  A sumersault is a sumersault. Why is it necessary for gymnastic pyrotechnics to be punctuated by the gymnast's arching her back and sticking out her buttocks when the gymnast is a woman but not when the gymnast is a man?  Why is it necessary for the routines to be accompanied by music and the tumbling interspersed with dance steps when performed by women but not when performed by men?  What do any of these absurd, sexualizing embellishments have to do with gymnastics, anyway?  Why is it not enough for women gymnasts to excel at gymnastics without having to overlay their floor routines with wheedling smiles, constructed and exaggerated femininity, and the overt sexualization of their bodies?

Consider the numerous other sports that female and male athletes both compete in: weight lifting, boxing, equestrian events, track and field - the list is long.  Yet in none of these other events are women expected to perform the sport in a manner that is so thoroughly permeated with gender that it alters the character of the sport itself and results in such a marked difference between the way women and men perform it.  Take the heptathlon, for example.  We would not expect the women competitors - and only the women competitors - to perform any of the sports that comprise this event to music while interspersing the actual sport (say, the shot put or the javelin throw) with mincing, prancing, and dancing around.  Why is the women's gymnastics floor routine treated differently?

In the Olympics, sexism has always determined which events women and men are permitted to compete in and the gymnastics floor routine is certainly not the only Olympic event in which socially constructed gender differences are rigidly enforced. But in the only other two notable Olympic events that I can think of in which they are - synchronized swimming and rhythmic gymnastics - the differentiation between female and male is so complete that males do not even get to participate in them.  (Men's synchronized swimming actually has a long history; in the nineteenth century, competitive synchronized swimming events were restricted to men only.  However, to this day, men are not permitted to participate in this event in the Olympics.)  In contrast, I am speaking here of precisely how the gymnastics floor routines - which both women and men do perform - are performed so differently when performed by each.  (And there is, of course, no rational, non-sexist reason why men should not compete in either synchronized swimming or rhythmic gymnastics.)

A useful test for sexism consists in the simple thought experiment in which a man replaces the woman in any social context or artistic rendering; everything else remains unchanged: only the sex of the participant is different.  Watch any modern women's floor routine but imagine that it is a man performing.  The male gymnast performing exactly those steps and striking exactly those poses would look foolish and ridiculous.  The effect would not be unlike that which is created by posing men in satirical calendars (not "beefcake" calendars, which are intended, say what you will about them, to celebrate, some might argue, exploit, male beauty) in which men are represented in typically "feminine," sexually alluring poses.  You'd likely consider it absurd and degrading to the male gymnast.  Perhaps you'd be embarrassed for him.  What does it say about our culture that movements and poses that are considered cute and sexy when performed by women are considered absurd and degrading when performed by men?  That we take it for granted that women gymnasts should perform their floor routines in a manner that would look degrading, foolish, and ridiculous when performed in exactly the same way by men demonstrates not only how thoroughly our concepts of male, female, and gender are shaped (and warped) by our culture but how the constructs of masculinity and femininity empower men while disempowering women.

Why do the conventions of music, dancing and often sexualized posing exist in the women's gymnastic floor routine but not in the men's?  The explanation may be found at least partly in the fact that the women's floor routine lends itself to being turned into a quasi dance routine simply because it is performed on a flat surface and involves movement that has an essentially aesthetic component, as opposed to an objective component, such as hitting a bullseye, or jumping higher, as measured in millimeters, than one's competitors.  Gymnastics, after all, is judged largely by subjective rather than objective standards.  Yet the men's floor routine is also performed on a large, flat surface and, like the women's routine, incorporates movements that are judged largely by aesthetic criteria.  So why the fundamental difference between the women's and the men's floor routines?  I attribute this to two factors.  One is the construction - or exaggeration, if you will - of gender, and the other is the overt and incessant sexualization of women's bodies.

As for the first of these, it is precisely because aesthetics and subjectivity play such an important role in judging the women's and men's floor routines that gender has driven them into such radically different types of performance.  Where subjectivity prevails, cultural norms will tend to creep in and perhaps come to predominate.  Thus, whereas the men's floor routine tends to incorporate socially constructed notions of masculinity, the women's floor routine tends to incorporate socially constructed notions of femininity.  It goes without saying that, in the case of the men's floor routine, masculinity consists in strength, power, agility, determination, and seriousness (when is the last time you saw a male gymnast smile ingratiatingly at the audience during the performance of his routine?).  And in the case of the women's floor routine, femininity (as specifically tailored for this event - it is gymnastics, after all) incorporates, in addition to the strength, power, agility, determination, and seriousness of the gymnast herself, the additional obligatory characteristics of daintiness, cuteness, sexuality, and submissiveness.  Striking poses such as those that women gymnasts typically assume throughout the performance of their floor routines is analogous to a display of submissiveness in the animal kingdom so as to forestall an act of aggression when a threat is perceived: thus are women expected in our culture to forestall aggression with overt displays of ingratiation and subservience.  (Surely many men come to expect this sort of display of submission as their due, and surely this is why men not infrequently exhort women - perfect strangers - when they pass them in the street, to "Smile, Honey.")  Thus, the projection of masculinity for male athletes and of femininity for female athletes has come to dominate the gymnastics floor routine for each sex, resulting in the radically different events that we see today.

The second factor is our society's obsession with sexualizing the female body.  The women's gymnastics floor routine is certainly not the only example of women's bodies and demeanor being sexualized in ways in which men's bodies and demeanor are not, but it is among the most conspicuous in sports.  (The revealing and sexualizing uniforms that women athletes are required to wear in certain sports, such as beach handball, in contrast to those that male athletes in the same sport are allowed to wear, is another.)  A skeptic may point to the numerous other sports in which women and their bodies are not sexualized.  To this I would answer that the failure of sexism to permeate these other sports to the same degree should not be interpreted as evidence that it is not sexism that has distorted the women's gymnastics floor routine.  Sexism in sports, because it reflects sexism in our culture, tends to manifest itself in different ways depending on the context.  It is not that sexism would not thrive everywhere that it could but that it tends to succeed better in some contexts than in others.  The women's gymnastics floor routine is one example of an area of women's sports in which sexism continues to thrive.

 

Revised 10 January 2023.

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About me: I am originally from New York City 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.

On "Mom's Simple Invention Works Wonders in the NICU" in Scary Mommy, July 26th, 2016

by David Balashinsky

As the saying goes, necessity is the mother of invention.  From Scary Mommy comes a story about  all three.  "Mom's Simple Invention Works Wonders in the NICU"  tells the story of Yamile Jackson, whose son, Zachary, was born three months before his due date.  Zachary spent 155 days in the NICU (neonatal intensive care unit) and, although his mother was able to spend hours with him every day, she could not stay with him over what must have been long, lonely nights for both of them.  That's where the necessity came in.

A PhD in both ergonomics and human factors engineering, [Jackson] wondered if there was a way to make her son think she was with him even when she wasn't.  Jackson created a bean-filled gardening glove that she tucked against her son every night.  She would cuddle the glove during the day so it had her scent, and leave it with him while she was gone, thinking that the glove would mimic the smell, warmth and feel of her being there.

The glove was a great success and, after Zachary was discharged, Jackson received a call from one of the NICU nurses who requested more of the gloves for the other "preemies" on the unit.  Jackson made 100 more of her gloves - which she named "the Zaky" - and ultimately founded a company, Nurtured by Design, to produce and market them. 

This is obviously a heart-warming story but what made an even bigger impression on me, when I read it, was the glaring moral inconsistency between the purpose of the gloves themselves and the financing of the company created to produce them.  

The motivation for Ms. Jackson's invention was clearly to provide comfort for her son in his mother's absence.  I don't think there are many among us who don't feel, instinctively, that all infants - those born prematurely or otherwise - should be welcomed into the world with loving kindness, gentleness, and provided with as much comfort as possible.  But the Zaky succeeded beyond that.  In a study of its effects on preemies in the NICU, it was discovered that the Zaky produced physiological benefits as well, with significantly decreased rates of apnea and bradycardia.  It should't come as a surprise that a neonate who is made to feel protected, nurtured, and comforted will do better, by objective measures, than one who is isn't, and this is what the study, comparing preemies with the Zaky to those without it, appears to have confirmed.  But if providing comfort for a neonate is better than not providing comfort, doesn't it stand to reason that even withholding comfort is still more beneficial than the infliction of pain and suffering?  Shouldn't every neonate be treated in a way that maximizes its sense of well-being? Shouldn't every neonate be treated with a deference to its fragility by respecting that infant's basic human right not to be subjected to an unnecessary and painful genital-alteration surgery?

Along comes the jarring and paradoxical news in this otherwise heartwarming story that Ms. Jackson's enterprise received a start-up grant from none other than Oprah Winfrey.  Yes, the same Oprah Winfrey who has shilled for SkinMedica, a company that manufactures anti-wrinkle face cream which is made from the stolen prepuces of infants who have been subjected to nontherapeutic circumcision - a totally unnecessary genital surgery that occurs over 3,000 times per day in our nation's hospitals and that annually takes the lives of over 100 infants and leaves over one million more scarred for life.  Oprah Winfrey, it should be noted, is also an outspoken opponent of female genital mutilation.  Evidently, male genital mutilation is perfectly okay as far as Oprah is concerned.  And if a biotech company can profit from the pain and suffering of infant boys, who are they to stand in the way of someone making money at their expense?  The moral inconsistency here is not simply opposing female genital mutilation while supporting male genital mutilation.  It is Oprah's underwriting of a product intended to comfort and aid neonates while shilling for a company that exploits them;  - a company that produces a "beauty cream," the creation of which depends upon causing infants excruciating pain, needless suffering, and the permanent diminution of function and sensation of their genitals.

I commend Ms. Jackson for inventing this product but I am disappointed that she accepted seed money from a tainted source.  There have been a number of notable cases of philanthropic or otherwise beneficent organizations refusing or returning donations from discredited donors and, in my opinion, that is what Ms. Jackson should now do.  For example, in 2005, Queens University returned a pledged gift of $1 million from David Radler after he pled guilty to mail fraud.  Another notable case is that in which the Harvard Divinity School ultimately rejected a $2.5 million endowment from Sheikh Zayed bin Sultan Nahayan.  (Zayed was the leader of the United Arab Emirates and one of the world's richest men.)

A cardinal principle of non-profits that rely upon donations, as Paul Dunn writes in Nonprofit Quarterly ("When a Donor Becomes Tainted," March 21, 2010) is the principle of "value incongruence."  This refers to "the degree of compatibility between the norms, values, and actions of an external stakeholder with the core values, beliefs, and activities of an organization." Ms. Jackson's company may not be a non-profit but I think it safe to assume that Jackson's aspirations for her company are that it embody core principles that are in line with those of biomedical ethics.  Her product, after all, is intended for use in hospital NICUs and was designed specifically to provide comfort to neonates.  Accordingly, Jackson's company ought to embody the values and ethics that should guide any healthcare provider or organization.  Chief among these, of course, is the dictum, primum non nocere: "first, do no harm."   But this core value is morally irreconcilable with the core value of a company that depends upon hospitals' harming infants in order to obtain the source material (fibroblasts from neonatal foreskins) that the company then uses to manufacture its products.  And while I have no reason to believe that Oprah herself profits from the sale of SkinMedica's foreskin beauty cream, nor that she has received blood money from this company for her endorsement of its product, the fact remains that even if Oprah Winfrey does not profit  directly or even indirectly from the unethical use of stolen body parts, she continues to be associated with a company that does.  And her endorsement of SkinMedica contributes to the perpetuation of the circumcision industry.  Winfrey's association with the Zaky, therefore, taints the Zaky itself.

I hope that the Zaky finds widespread use in NICUs around the world, bringing comfort and improved health to preemies.  Still, as unfortunate as it is, premature delivery is largely a natural phenomenon.  If hospitals are willing to take simple measures - such as providing Zakys to preemies - in order to ameliorate distress, pain and suffering when they result from something that, in most cases, cannot be prevented, shouldn't hospitals be at least as willing to refrain from causing these things when they can?

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.

On "It happened to me: I was born without a vagina hole" by Anonymous in xoJane

by David Balashinsky

I recently came across the following essay in xoJane: It Happened to Me: I Was Born Without a Vagina Hole," by Anonymous.  In this essay, the author recounts the signal events in her youth related to her having been born apparently with the congenital deformity known as microperforate hymen.  As frivolously as the author seems to treat this subject (only one of the maddening and grating aspects of Anonymous's writing is her insistence on using the jarring and vulgar vagina hole throughout her essay; surely vaginal introitus is one the few examples we have of an anatomical term for a part of the genitalia that is infinitely more graceful, more mellifluous and downright more appealing than the layman's vagina hole), it is nonetheless moving to read the author's account, first, of her discovery that she was born with a preternaturally small vaginal introitus and, subsequently, of her eventual efforts to seek a surgical remedy for it. Because she was a minor, Anonymous had to persuade her mother to allow her to have the surgery, a campaign that, evidently, was hard won.   Happily, Anonymous prevailed.  As she reports with ironical understatement, "Eventually . . . I was granted the rights to my very own vagina hole."

This last clause underscores an important point: every human being is born with the right to ownership and control of her or his own body.  It should go without saying that the physical boundaries of one's body - its external limits - are analogous to a political border or a property line.  Our bodies declare to the world, "no trespassing."  Without the right to be secure in one's own physical person, the individual is denied full personhood.  An exception to this principle ought not to be made for our genitalia.  As with the rest of our bodies, private parts are private property.  They don't belong to the state and they don't belong to one's parents.

But Anonymous's essay illustrates another important point, as well.  Namely, that the right of bodily self-ownership goes beyond the right to be left alone.  It includes the right to control one's body.  It necessarily follows that this includes the right to alter one's body as one sees fit.  That is why, from an ethical standpoint, I believe that it would have been wrong to deny this young woman the corrective genital surgery that she sought.   

Because we experience self-awareness, our bodies have meaning for us.  That is no less true and maybe even more true of our genitalia.  Hence, it is not merely the rights to protect and to alter one's genitalia that are fundamental but the right to value and to determine for oneself the significance of one's genitalia that is also fundamental.  This, too, is an essential part of personshood.  That is why it is especially demeaning when opponents of genital rights dismiss the significance of the prepuce by saying "it's just skin," as though the person whose skin it is (even if it were "just skin") had no valid claim to value it and has no valid claim to resent its involuntary removal or to mourn its loss.  To impose one's own judgment on the significance to another person of a part of that other person's body that has been stolen from him is demeaning: an affront to that person's dignity.  This principle is well illustrated by Anonymous's narrative.  Why else would she have written about her experience if her genitalia were not an integral part of her self-concept as a human being with free will?  Why did she compile a list of reasons why she needed the surgery?  Without knowing all of the specific reasons on that list, it is nonetheless evident from this essay that Anonymous attached a meaning and a value to the structure and configuration of her genitalia.  Moreover, that the shape, structure, and function of her genitalia were very important - intrinsic, even - to her ability to live her life as she wanted to live it.  And that is why this young woman sought to exercise control over her vagina.  It was not merely because of the importance of its structure to its physiological function but because the importance to Anonymous of the structure of her vaginal introitus transcended mere function.  Not having the opportunities available only to someone with a fully functional (which is to say, complete) genitalia prevented this young woman from fully experiencing her sexuality.  And because one's sexuality is central to one's sense of personhood, to deprive this young woman of the right to control her genitalia through the corrective surgery that she sought would be to deprive her of an essential part of her personhood.

That is why intactivists fight for the right of boys, girls, and intersex children to determine for themselves what parts of their bodies they get to keep.  That is why non-consensual genital surgery is a human-rights violation: not only because it violates the sanctity of one's personal borders, and not only because it deprives the victim of the functional use of the part that has been stolen, but because it deprives him of the right to experience his full sexuality and so deprives him of his right to full personhood.

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.

For Whose Benefit? (An Open Letter to Karen Remley, Executive Director and CEO of the American Academy of Pediatrics)

by David Balashinsky

Dear Dr. Remley;

Recently, your organization, the AAP, published a revised policy statement regarding procedural pain in neonates.  The very first recommendation, as it appears in the Abstract section of the new policy statement (AAP Gateway, Pediatrics; February 2016, Volume 137 / Issue 2) is that "The prevention of pain in neonates should be the goal of all pediatricians and health care professionals who work with neonates. . . ."  In the Background section, the revised policy also states, in part, "The prevention and alleviation of pain in neonates . . . is important not only because it is ethical but also because exposure to repeated painful stimuli early in life is known to have short- and long-term adverse sequelae."  Your policy also states (again, returning to the Abstract): "every health care facility caring for neonates should implement . . . a pain-prevention program that includes strategies for minimizing the number of painful procedures performed. . . ."  

I take it as axiomatic that the starting point for "preventing or minimizing pain" is avoiding unnecessary pain in the first place.  That being the case, I am curious to know how the AAP reconciles these humane and common-sense recommendations with its continued support for  nontherapeutic infant circumcision.

Nontherapeutic infant circumcision, which is still routinely practiced in the United States, in contrast to most of the developed world, and which is overwhelmingly practiced here for reasons of custom or cosmesis, is a medically unnecessary surgery that violates the four most basic and important principles of medical ethics.  First, not to do harm.  Second, not to provide a treatment in the absence of a medical problem (such as a disease or harmful congenital deformity). Third, to opt for the least invasive or aggressive treatment available when there is a disease or other medical problem.  And, fourth, to obtain consent from the patient before rendering care unless the patient is incapable of providing consent and the treatment is required urgently to save life or limb. Nontherapeutic infant circumcision violates every one of these principles.  Every one of the "health benefits" on the basis of which  infant circumcision is rationalized can be achieved through the use of non-painful and non-invasive means, such as the practice  of basic hygiene, the administration of the HPV vaccine, the use of a condom in order to prevent the spread of STIs, or the use of antibiotics or other non-painful and minimally invasive treatments when a pathological condition, such as a UTI for example, does occur - in other words, exactly the same prophylactic and remedial approach to genitourinary health as is employed with girls.   Even something as simple as not smoking has been proven to have a greater effect upon reducing a man's chances of developing penile cancer than circumcision has.  

Above and beyond all this, circumcision causes extreme pain and distress to the neonate who is subjected to it.  For generations, circumcision was routinely performed without any pain-relief whatsoever in the absurd belief that infants are incapable of experiencing pain.  Today, with over one million circumcisions still performed annually in the United States, the application of adequate or even any pain relief is by no means universal nor is it mandated by law.  By some estimates, even now, only 25% of children who are subjected to circumcision receive adequate anesthesia.

The AAP concedes that "existing scientific evidence is not sufficient to recommend routine circumcision."  And yet, lacking sufficient evidence-based medical justification for nontherapeutic circumcision, the position of the AAP, as articulated in its most recent policy statement (2012) is that "the final decision should still be left to parents to make in the context of their religious, ethical and cultural beliefs."  Why does the AAP, an organization of medical professionals that professes to be "dedicated to the health, safety, and well being of infants," continue to defend a painful and medically unnecessary surgery on the basis of "religious, ethical, and cultural beliefs"?   How is subjecting male infants to circumcision for cultural or religious reasons ethically any different from subjecting girls to "female circumcision," which is also performed for cultural and religious reasons?  Defenders of infant male circumcision in the United States are quick to claim that male genital cutting and female genital cutting are fundamentally dissimilar - but isn't this just a form of cultural arrogance?   It amounts to claiming "It's okay when we do it."  But it is merely the distorting lens of one's own cultural context that makes these two practices appear to be fundamentally different.  In a culture in which male circumcision has been normalized but female circumcision has not, the two practices are simply judged by different yardsticks.  Yet there is no rational scientific or medical basis for hypothesizing and studying the potential health benefits of surgical modification to male genitalia while denying a priori any comparable health benefits of surgical modification to female genitalia.  

This raises an important question:  If studies were to suggest that the "benefits" of female genital cutting outweigh the "risks," would the AAP likewise endorse "access to this procedure for families who choose it" (to use the AAP's parlance)?  That is not a far-fetched hypothetical question.  In Egypt, where female genital cutting remains common, its defenders include physicians who claim, just as the AAP does on behalf of male circumcision, that female circumcision is medically justified.  It is probably not a coincidence that female circumcision is now, in the 21st century, increasingly becoming "medicalized" (that is, performed in hospitals under aseptic conditions and justified on medical grounds) just as male circumcision became medicalized in Great Britain and North America in the 19th and 20th centuries and is now becoming medicalized in Africa. (Indeed, one might reasonably speculate that the defenders of female circumcision have now taken a page from the AAP's book.)   Nor is it a coincidence that the "benefits" of female circumcision closely parallel the myriad claims that are routinely made in defense of male circumcision, including "improved aesthetics and hygiene."  The inescapable conclusion of all this is that the AAP endorses what is essentially a cultural practice that harms infants and causes them excruciating pain needlessly even as it acknowledges that there is insufficient medical evidence to support routine infant circumcision (RIC) and even though, as the AAP now acknowledges in its latest policy statement on neonatal pain management, "there are significant research gaps regarding the assessment, management, and outcomes of neonatal pain; and there is a continuing need for studies evaluating the effects of neonatal pain and pain-prevention strategies on long-term neurodevelopmental, behavioral, and cognitive outcomes."

As controversial as nontherapeutic circumcision is, there remains one fact about it that is not in dispute that, to my knowledge, the AAP has never addressed.  This is that no infant ever consents to his own circumcision.  Consider again the AAP's position statement that "the procedure's benefits justify access to this procedure for families who choose it."  But, of course, it is not "families" who choose circumcision but parents.  The individual himself  - the one who is actually being circumcised and, therefore, the only person whose opinion should actually matter - has no say at all.  But by what right of parental authority is it ethical or appropriate for a parent to order the medically unnecessary amputation of a part of his or her child's body?  And by what principle of medical ethics does the AAP endorse such a parental prerogative?  Throughout the AAP's deliberations regarding its official stance on circumcision, how much weight was given to the right of the individual himself not to have part of his penis amputated without his consent?  Where is the AAP's recognition that every human being is born with an innate and inviolable right to ownership and control of his own body?   Infants, after all, do not remain infants forever. Circumcision, on the other hand, is permanent.  (And, of course, there is absolutely nothing to prevent an intact adult male from choosing for himself  to undergo a circumcision once he is old enough to weigh for himself the costs and potential benefits of circumcision.)  Where is there any acknowledgement by the AAP that the man the circumcised infant will one day become may object to having had a functional and erogenous part of his penis amputated on the basis of nothing more substantial than an amalgamation of superstitions, cultural norms, religious beliefs, specious and, at best, tenuous medical justifications?  Was there ever even a passing consideration by the AAP's task force on circumcision that that man may prefer to have experienced life with his body whole and his penis intact?   The AAP equivocates about the "risks" of circumcision (while conceding that no one actually knows for certain what those risks are) yet refuses to acknowledge even now that circumcision is a harm in and of itself.   If the AAP's refusal to recognize this fact is predicated on its dismissal of the functions and importance of the male prepuce, including its role in sexual sensation for both male and female and its functional role during coitus, it is predicated even more fundamentally on the AAP's apparent disdain for the right of the individual to decide for himself which parts of his body are important to him -  and to decide for himself which parts of his body he gets to keep and which parts get cut off. 

It's time for the AAP to live up to the lofty ideals of its professed mission "to attain optimal physical, mental, and social health and well-being for all infants, children, adolescents and young adults."  The AAP has an ethical duty to protect children; that ethical duty is incumbent upon each of its members, as well.  That duty includes refraining from subjecting neonates to painful and unnecessary surgeries, especially a surgery that results in the permanent loss of a functional and sensitive body part that every neonate, every infant, every child, every adolescent, and every man has a right to retain for as long as he, himself, chooses to keep it.  Revising its policy on circumcision so as to bring it into conformity with the AAP's recent policy statement on neonatal pain-prevention (to say nothing of bringing it into conformity with the principles of medical ethics and into conformity with a basic respect for infants' and men's fundamental human right to physical integrity) would instantly bring the AAP a long way toward realizing its stated goal of "preventing or minimizing pain in neonates."

Update (June 10, 2025):  In 2018, Dr. Remley left the AAP to become a Senior Fellow at the de Beaumont Foundation.  Subsequently, she was a Senior Advisor to the Office of the Commissioner at the Virginia Department of Health and, most recently, beginning in 2020, she was the Director of the National Center on Birth Defects and Developmental Disabilities at the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) (and, just as a reminder, Dr. Remley, the male prepuce is not a birth defect).  In March of this year, Dr. Remley was one of five senior leaders who resigned their posts at the CDC.  This followed the resignations of several other top CDC officials in the wake of the Trump administration's assault on the CDC, on science and on public health.  The AAP's 2012 Circumcision Policy Statement expired in 2017.

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.

In Response to Amberlee Lovell: "Should You Circumcise Your Newborn?" {in familyshare}

by David Balashinsky

There is a maxim that one should choose one's battles. With the apparently unending stream of blog posts and articles in parenting sites and magazines on the subject of infant circumcision, one is confronted with the by-now tiresome question: Is this worth responding to? The stakes increase when one has to create a new user name and password in order to comment. Yet another online ID? Most exasperating of all is when one's comment is limited to 5,000 characters. Hence today's BalaBlog post. I am responding to a post in familyshare in which Ms. Amberlee Lovell reinvents the wheel yet again, and poses the novel question, "Should you circumcise your newborn?"

If Lovell's blog post has one virtue (and it is a dubious one, as I intend to argue), it is that it at least treats the appropriateness of circumcision as an open question. Ms. Lovell certainly seems to strive for "balance" in this superficial and disappointingly un-researched post. As much as intactivists like me are baffled that there is anything still "controversial" about the assertion that it is bad medicine and unethical to amputate an important part of a baby's penis without his consent and in the complete absence of medical necessity, the fact remains that, because we still live in a male-genital-cutting culture, forced infant circumcision remains controversial. There is no denying that. That's actually a good thing because it means that our society has moved away from near universal mute acceptance and is now well on the way toward ending this barbaric practice once and for all. We are currently in the controversy stage of that process. For that reason, I think it's unfair to come down too hard on Lovell for attempting to consider "both sides" of this controversy, just as it is unfair to criticize too harshly women who have been subjected to female genital mutilation and in turn want to impose it on their own daughters. Lovell is in and of our own male-genital-cutting culture and that, more than anything else, is what is reflected in her attempt to strike a balance in her post between the "pros" (as if there were any) and the cons of circumcision.

There comes a time, however, when ignorance can no longer be used as a defense. As numerous commenters at the site in which Lovell's post appears who arrived there before I did have pointed out, Lovell cites thoroughly discredited sources in support of forced infant circumcision which even the most rudimentary sort of journalistic research should have prompted her to dismiss. For example (and this is not the only example - not by a long shot), Lovell recycles the claim that circumcision can reduce the risk of penile cancer with nary a mention of the fact that the American Cancer Society itself has stated that "circumcision is not of value in preventing cancer of the penis" and that not smoking cigarettes would have more of an effect in reducing a man's chances of getting penile cancer than being subjected to forced genital cutting would.

For me, the ethical dimension to the question of forced genital cutting makes all other considerations irrelevant but, in the interest of taking up the gauntlet thrown down by those who obdurately attempt to justify routine infant circumcision as a medically valid procedure, I will merely point out that, as with any medical treatment, the burden of proof does not rest with those who oppose the treatment but with those who advocate it. It is highly significant, therefore, that despite hundreds of studies, even its most ardent professional supporters, the membership of the AAP (whose impartiality is highly suspect inasmuch as these physicians benefit financially from the performance of circumcision to the tune of several hundred million dollars annually) concedes that there is insufficient evidence to warrant recommending RIC. At what point does a lack of supporting evidence for the alleged efficacy of a prophylactic genital surgery cease to constitute a justification for practicing it? For the advocates of forced infant circumcision, the answer, apparently, is never.

This brings us to the crux of the matter: Are there really even two sides to this debate? At what point in a society's development and in its concomitant transition from acceptance of a cultural practice to holding that practice in universal opprobrium is it no longer socially acceptable to treat these countervailing impulses evenhandedly? At what point is it no longer acceptable to confer legitimacy upon the cultural inertia that clings to ancient customs by granting it equal status with the movement toward a more ethical society? I would like to suggest in response to Lovell's post that that time has come. As one who has not herself been subjected to genital mutilation, Lovell writes from a position, at least in that one respect, of privilege, and so she has the luxury of regarding the science and the ethics of forced infant circumcision as an "open question." For me, however, as a victim of male genital mutilation, I do not consider this an open question. Knowing what we now know about the history of circumcision, particularly in the United States - how it was promoted during the 19th century as a way to prevent boys from masturbating and as a panacea for numerous other ailments, how it metamorphosed from nineteenth-century pseudoscience into a twentieth-century cultural norm and has persisted as a cure desperately in search of a disease, and how its boosters and defenders routinely inflate its alleged benefits while completely dismissing its harms - to regard the medical validity of forced genital cutting, strictly from a scientific standpoint, as an open question is comparable to climate-change deniers' claim that "the jury is out" on whether climate change is caused by the burning of fossil fuels. It is like the claim of "scientific creationism" (or "creation science") that evolution "is only a theory" and that the Earth is really only 7,000 years old. There actually is broad scientific consensus on these questions. Circumcision is no different. That is why not a single national professional medical organization on Earth recommends RIC whereas several such organizations outside of the United States not only discourage it but have condemned RIC as a human rights violation.

There is simply no getting around the fact that RIC - or more properly, male genital mutilation (MGM) - is a medically unnecessary surgery that violates four of the most basic and important principles of medical ethics. First, not to do harm. Second, not to provide a treatment in the absence of a medical problem (such as a disease or harmful congenital deformity). Third, to opt for the least invasive or aggressive treatment available when there is a disease or other medical problem. And, fourth, to obtain consent from the patient before rendering care unless the patient is incapable of providing consent and the treatment is required urgently to save life or limb. Routine infant circumcision violates every one of these principles.

From a moral standpoint, to treat involuntary genital cutting as an open question is comparable to putting slavery up for debate and claiming that there are two sides to this question and that "people of good will can have an honest disagreement" about whether the benefits of involuntary servitude to society as a whole outweigh the harms (or "risks," to adopt the euphemistic language of forced-circumcision advocates). It is amoral and pure sophistry to cloak a human rights violation in the mantle of medical legitimacy for the purposes of academic debate. An act that is manifestly harmful and that deprives a human being of the right to control his or her own body cannot be considered in a moral vacuum. That is the essential ethical problem in which the pro-circumcision versus pro-human rights debate is entangled and thus, despite paying lip service to this fundamental question, Lovell's post ultimately fails in that it treats what is in fact an egregious human rights violation as an open question.

Lovell asks, "Should you circumcise your baby?" I ask, How many millions more males and intersex infants must have their most basic human right violated before our society universally acknowledges that every human being is born with an inalienable right not to have a body part amputated or surgically altered for reasons of custom or cosmesis in accordance merely with the predilections of that child's parents?

Update (June 9, 2025): Revisiting this post and the article to which it responds for the first time in almost ten years, I have discovered that Amberlee Lovell is now Amberlee L. Peterson and that the platform in which it originally appeared ("familyshare)" is now "familytoday." Aside from the byline and the name of the publication, I honestly cannot tell what revisions have been made to the text of the article itself, although my impression is that the position of the article has moved slightly in the direction of skepticism toward RIC and slightly away from the standard issue medical justifications. However, the article continues to contain discredited and debunked pseudoscientific claims. And, more importantly, because it continues to treat as an open and valid question whether a parent should subject her or his child to genital mutilation, my original objection to it, on ethical grounds, stands.

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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.