Recall that the @AmerAcadPeds also endorsed FGM in 2010 before a well-merited backlash forced them to retract the recommendation—which was not made on medical or scientific grounds: nytimes.com/2010/05/07/hea… /1
Religious and cultural reasons are cited frequently by American organizations in support of routine infant genital cutting, while they acknowledge that the practice is not medically necessary. /2
The African HIV studies were done in adults who voluntarily chose to be circumcised. No anti-circumcision activist or academic opposes adults making this choice. However, applying the results of clinical studies in adults to completely healthy infants routinely is unethical. /3
There is no other instance—none—where an irreversible surgical procedure is carried out routinely on completely healthy infants without a surgical indication, and that too on a functional organ. /4
There is no other instance—none—where surgery is recommended routinely on completely healthy infants to achieve hygiene easily achieved by washing, or to prevent uncommon infections (UTIs) easily treated with antibiotics. /5
Breast cancer is much more common than HIV and penile cancer combined, and kills more people. But we don’t recommend routine bilateral mastectomies for all post-menopausal women, even though in this particular case it WOULD dramatically reduce the disease—that would be crazy. /6
Yet we do something even more crazy by recommending routine genital cutting on perfectly healthy infants—and more unethical too, because adult women can make their decisions, and breasts have no physiological function post-menopause. /7
If your main reason to support infant genital cutting is because it is in your holy book, remember that all of the Abrahamic holy books also give instructions on how to own, sell, and trade slaves. They have no credibility. /8
Screaming anti-Semitism or Islamophobia to cover up your support of routine infant genital cutting only reinforces how toxic religious indoctrination can be, and how easily ancient barbaric myths can be used to justify an action that under any other circumstance would land /9
its perpetrator in jail. Religions cover up the worst crimes on kids—from the Catholic Church to the Sunnah-endorsed justification of child marriage in Islam to routine infant genital cutting in Judaism.
Choose your kids over your faith. Stop all infant genital cutting.
/end
Choose your kids over your faith. Stop all infant genital cutting.
/end
