Compelling Evidence

"There is compelling evidence that male circumcision reduces the risk of heterosexually acquired HIV infection in men by approximately 60 percent."  World Health Organization website  "Three randomized controlled trials have shown that male circumcision provided by well-trained health professionals in properly equipped settings is safe."

There is compelling evidence that women fare dangerously in picking up life-threatening infectious diseases when they have sexual relations with uncircumcised men.  The state of women's health is vastly improved when the foreskins have been removed from their sex partners.  This is a not-inconsiderable benefit for half the human race.

But a German court has made the decision at a Cologne-based regional court that the "fundamental right of the child to bodily integrity outweighed the fundamental rights of the parents", who presumably choose to have a male child circumcised based solely on religious customs.  They have ruled banning the surgical removal of the foreskin in male infants.

Grown men whose doctors advise them after too many bouts of bacterial-borne infections to undergo circumcision suffer far more physical distress than they would have had their parents taken steps to have them circumcised as newborns.

In fact, until relatively recently in Canada, and throughout North America, based on these various, quite important health considerations it was commonly routine for newborn male babies to be circumcised.  The non-circumcised during that time frame represented the exception.  Doctors and paediatricians in particular felt it to be a worthwhile move to move directly to circumcision shortly after birth.

But a movement has long since ensued that has been anti-circumcision.  General opinion has moved in the reverse, favouring leaving the foreskin intact.  Which means that men should pay far closer attention to maintaining a level of personal hygiene they were able to forego previously, with the foreskin removed.  Because, within that moist breeding ground for bacteria, disease-causing pathogens thrive.

The World Health Organization has a how-to manual of instructions for "early infant male circumcision under local anaesthesia ... for the purposes of HIV prevention and other health benefits", obviously offering credence to all the beneficial claims made as a result of scientific medical research favouring circumcision.

According to one unnamed doctor (anonymous in fear of drawing the ire of stridently outraged "intactivists"): "The evidence indicates that over 90% of urinary tract infections are in boys who are not circumcised."  "In all my thirty years of doing this, I've never had parents come to me to say they regretted having their child circumcised."

Conversely and to the satisfaction of many anti-circumcision activists, the Canadian Paediatric Society issued a 2009 position paper concluding that "the overall evidence of the benefits and harms of circumcision is so evenly balanced that it does not support recommending circumcision as a routine procedure for newborns".

"The ruling in Germany is certainly a major step forward for intactivism", according to the founder of the Canadian Foreskin Awareness Project.  "We absolutely agree with the German court's ruling that a boy's right to keep all of his body parts and keep his physical integrity takes precedence over the religious beliefs of his parents, and we look forward to Canada passing a similar law".