Making America Safe for Foreskins

To Persons of Good Will Who Circumcise Babies


Before you mar the body, wound the spirit, and censor the life of another human being who is helpless to stop you, by severing him from a means of perceiving, experiencing, sharing and enjoying his existence, and robbing him of what has been described as one of nature's sublimest gifts -- the experience of having a foreskin -- ask a random assortment of men who have had that experience one question: Then ask yourself: What policy about the foreskins of babies is appropriate to a person of good will who knows how most men whose foreskins are intact would answer that question?


To the American Medical Association:

Should the highest medical authority and court of appeals of a civilized country tolerate the routine amputation and irreversible destruction, by its own members, of a healthy, sensitive, normally functioning part of a human being's body, that is rightfully his and that he instinctively wants to keep intact, at a time in his life when he can't understand what is being done to him -- or why -- and can't speak for or protect himself?


To the American Academy of Pediatrics:

How can anyone who subscribes to the "Do no harm" ethic embraced by every medical society in the civilized world, justify cutting off part a baby's penis that so many males who had that part of their penises cut off when they were babies would rather have intact -- and that so many males who have that part of their penises intact value beyond price?


To the American College of Obstetrics and Gynecology:

Some doctors who circumcise babies now acknowledge that when a baby screams, struggles, vomits, defecates and lapses into coma when his foreskin is clamped, slit, torn, crushed and sliced, he's in pain.

When will they acknowledge that a baby's screams are his only way of telling them what any other male with a knife at his penis would try to tell them: that he doesn't want any of it cut off?