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Circumcision Should be Criminalized

http://www.youtube.com... Resolution: Circumcision should be criminalized Definitions: Circumcision: The non-consensual cutting off of a child's foreskin. Should: X 'should' be done in order for X to conform to Western law and Western moral norms. Criminalized: Rendered into a crime punishable by the government. No semantics. (Note: My opponent is not a native English speaker. Voters are asked to mark the grammar and spelling point as a tie as long as he maintains the quality of writing of his first comment in the comment section throughout the debate.) It is not called the 'Partial Declaration of Human Rights'. It is not the 'Sometimes Declaration of Human Rights'. It is the Universal Declaration, guaranteeing all human beings their basic human rights - without exception. Ban Ki-moon, U.N. Secretary General, December 2010 Imagine a man being strapped down to a table. The ministry of health of a repressive state, of which this man is a subject, has decided that all man must be forced to have their foreskin cut off. To save money, no anesthetic will be used. When the man screams out in protest and horror as his genitals are about to be mutilated, he is told the surgery is a medical necessity though all the evidence is to the contrary. For 10 minutes, a surgeon uses a knife to cut in to the most sensitive part of the fully conscious man's body. Is this torture? This is circumcision. The only difference is that, in our society, circumcision happens to newborns. Traditionalism and religion take the place of the repressive government as well as a hospitals industry that makes billions of dollars a year administering circumcisions[1]. Circumcision is an Immoral Religious Ritual in Disguise The shedding of infant blood, as well as the sacrifice of the foreskin is rooted in human and animal sacrifices of ancient Middle Eastern religions - the foreskin serving as a substitute for the entire human victim[2]. Circumcision was introduced into Western monotheism through the Jewish ritual of bris milôh ("covenant of circumcision") in observance of commandments they believe was given to them by their god Yahweh in the Hebrew Bible. Later in the 12th century, the Jewish rabbi Moses Maimonides expressed Jewish thinking on the subject. In his The Guide to the Perplexed he says that circumcision is intended to diminish the sex drive adding "The bodily pain caused to that member is the real purpose of circumcision."[3] and argued that it should be done to newborns because "for up to that time the imaginative form that compels the parents to love [the newborn] is not yet consolidated. For this imaginative form increases through habitual contact and grows with the growth of the child". Maimonides recognized that the true purpose of circumcision is to cause a child to suffer so much that, if not done immediately after birth, the parents would protest on behalf of their child's well-being - and this during the Middle Ages when excruciating pain was quite common. The modern practice of circumcision, began to spread in English speaking countries in the 19th century[4] as a method of torture used against little boys for masturbation. As Dr. John Harvey Kellogg, a leading proponent of circumcision at the time wrote, "The operation should be performed by a surgeon without administering an anesthetic, as the brief pain attending the operation will have a salutary effect upon the mind, especially if it be connected with the idea of punishment, as it may well be in some cases."[5] In modern times, religious justifications for circumcision have been replaced by pseudosecular medical arguments in support of the practice. However, modern medicine has exposed these justifications as simply more mythology. This is why no national or international medical association recommends routine circumcision[6]. There is simply no medical warrant for this surgery. Circumcision is Torture It may be tempting to take refuge in the notion that infants can't feel pain. There is no reason to believe this. The American Academy of Pediatrics, American Academy of Family Physicians, and the Canadian Paediatric Society all agree that circumcision is painful to the infant[7][8][9]. There is no reason to believe that circumcision is not experienced as extreme torture by infants. The pain is so horrendous that many babies go into shock and just staring making gurgling noise[10]. These are the lucky ones. Most babies are forced to undergo the torture fully conscious emitting terrifying screams for 6 to 10 minutes (see video). In addition to the obvious physical torture, the psychological effects of the torment persist after the procedure. The British Medical Association (BMA) states that "it is now widely accepted, including by the BMA, that this surgical procedure has medical and psychological risks."[11]. Violent predispositions, disrupted infant-maternal trust and bonding[12], and post-traumatic stress disorder[13] are the psychological effects of circumcision. Circumcision is Technically Illegal The United Nations Convention on the Rights of the Child says that a child has a right to not be mutilated[14]. The U.S. Constitution[15] declares that a child has a right to security and property (we can assume that a person's body parts are his or her own property). The Born-Alive Infants Protection Act declares that all infants are considered persons under federal law[16]. Female genital mutilation is already banned under US federal law[17]. Torture is prohibited by Article 5 of the UN Universal Declaration of Human Rights and the United Nations Convention Against Torture[18]. Torture is defined as the practice or act of deliberately inflicting severe physical pain on a person[21]. As noted, circumcision meets this criteria. What we do over 60 percent[19] of male infants in the U.S. would be illegal to do to a terrorist. If Osama bin Laden had been caught alive, it would be impermissible under the Geneva Convention to do to him what we do to our newborns. With all this legal framework declaring that torture and forced amputation is flatly illegal, one wonders if circumcision is already a crime. As it turns out, some Western courts are discovering that, indeed, circumcision is illegal. As one German court discovered, "It had been done for so long that it seemed legal when - according to the court - it wasn't."[20]. [1] http://www.circumstitions.com... [2] http://books.google.com... [3] http://www.jewsagainstcircumcision.org... [4] http://www.cirp.org... [5] http://etext.lib.virginia.edu... [6] http://www.nocirc.org... [7] http://pediatrics.aappublications.org... [8] http://www.aafp.org... [9] http://www.caringforkids.cps.ca... [10] http://www.nocirc.org... [11] http://www.bma.org.uk... [12] "Circumcision. A medical or a human rights issue?". Milos MF, Macris D (1992). [13] http://epublications.bond.edu.au... [14] http://www2.ohchr.org... [15] http://www.usconstitution.net... [16] http://www.nrlc.org... [17] http://www.fgmnetwork.org... [18] http://treaties.un.org... [19] http://www.msnbc.msn.com... [20] http://www.bbc.co.uk... [21] http://en.wikipedia.org...