Circumcision violates child’s right to an open future
A paper in the Journal of Medical Ethics (on-line first, January 2013) argues that non-therapeutic circumcision (is ethically objectionable and legally borderline because it violates a child’s right to an open future. This principle is widely accepted in ethical and legal circles and has often been applied to limit the power of parents to indoctrinate children into particular political beliefs or cultural identities. It has less often been applied to bodies rather than minds, and never previously to permanent bodily alterations such as circumcision. In this paper, the author (Dr Robert Darby) elucidates the open future principle and consider whether it is applicable to non-therapeutic circumcision of boys, whether performed for cultural/religious or for prophylactic/health reasons. He argues that the principle is highly applicable to non-therapeutic circumcision (NTC), and concludes that NTC would be a violation of the child’s right to an open future, and thus objectionable from both an ethical and a human rights perspective. Dr Darby suggests that NTC is similar to designer deafness (i.e. causing a child to suffer hearing loss) because it also results is sensory deprivation, and also that circumcision is comparable to smoking, in that it is really a bad habit that causes long term harm to the body. Preventing a child from smoking and protecting his foreskin have the same rationale: to preserve the body for future use and ensure that the future adult is able to make autonomous decisions about such intimate personal matters.
ABSTRACT
The principle of the child’s right to an open future was first proposed by the legal philosopher Joel Feinberg and developed further by bioethicist Dena Davis. The principle holds that children possess a unique class of rights called rights in trust – rights that they cannot yet exercise, but which they will be able to exercise when they reach maturity. Parents should not, therefore, take actions that permanently foreclose on or pre-empt the future options of their children, but leave them the greatest possible scope for exercising personal life choices in adulthood. Davis particularly applies the principle to genetic counselling, arguing that parents should not take deliberate steps to create physically abnormal children, and to religion, arguing that while parents are entitled to bring their children up in accordance with their own values, they are not entitled to inflict physical or mental harm, neither by omission nor commission. In this paper I aim to elucidate the open future principle and consider whether it is applicable to non-therapeutic circumcision of boys, whether performed for cultural/religious or for prophylactic/health reasons. I argue that the principle is highly applicable to non-therapeutic circumcision, and conclude that NTC would be a violation of the child’s right to an open future, and thus objectionable from both an ethical and a human rights perspective.
The paper concludes:
The child’s right to an open future complements the four principles of bioethics developed by Beauchamp and Childress by meeting the objection that children cannot possess rights because they lack moral autonomy and the capacity to make rational choices. Children may lack such autonomy now, but as adults-to-be they will develop such autonomy in the normal course of their growth. It also supports and extends the argument of Hodges et al that additional scrutiny is demanded when we make decisions about non-essential surgery on children, especially when it entails removal of functional body parts. One of the compelling features of the principle is its alignment with John Locke’s proposition that parental authority derives from their duty of care towards their children and is limited by the interests of the latter. Circumcision is analogous to smoking, eating junk food and not cleaning one’s teeth because it causes long term harm to the body and reduces its future functionality. Forcing children to brush their teeth or endure painful vaccinations, preventing them from smoking and protecting their foreskin all have the same rationale: to preserve the body for future use and ensure that the future adult is able to make autonomous decisions about such matters. The open future principle both constrains parents and gives them authority – constrains them from cutting off their children’s future options, but gives them the authority to prevent their children from recklessly doing the same.
Source: Robert Darby. The child’s right to an open future: Is the principle applicable to non-therapeutic circumcision? Journal of Medical Ethics, on-line first, 30 January 2013
Journal of Medical Ethics, July 2013: Special issue on the ethics of male circumcision
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