“No normal child needs to be circumcised”

Parents can safely stop agonising over whether their baby boys need to be circumcised, thanks to a new medical policy statement.

According to Australian and New Zealand child protection advocates, the revised policy on circumcision recently released by the Royal Australasian College of Physicians means that parents can simply forget about the idea of circumcising. “The circumcision decision is actually a fake dilemma”, said Sydney paediatrician and child heath specialist Dr George Williams. “No normal baby needs to be circumcised. Thanks to the new policy, parents can stop worrying about surgery and focus instead on the important things that a new baby needs – love, warm clothes and breast milk.”

After a lengthy review of the medical evidence, the RACP concludes that routine infant circumcision is not warranted in Australia and New Zealand. This is because the diseases from which circumcision may give some protection are too rare or not a threat to children; because it does not protect enough; and because the resulting harm is too great and the complication rates are too high.

“The authors of the policy have gone into great detail about those diseases and the levels of protection they may offer, but that’s the bottom line,” said Dr Williams “Circumcision is not medically necessary or even desirable, and is not recommended as a health precaution.”

“They’ve gone into less detail about the harm, complications and risks of circumcision, but these go all the way up to death – for example, from unnoticed bleeding, or infection with diseases such as meningitis. That’s an unacceptable risk for a surgical operation that the RACP says is unnecessary.”

Tasmania’s Children’s Commissioner, Paul Mason, praised the RACP for recognising the importance of ethical and human rights issues in the circumcision decision; for recognising that the foreskin has significant sexual functions and is actually the most sensitive part of the penis; and for pointing out that the operation is non-therapeutic (i.e. does not fix anything) and that the infant is unable to give consent. For these reasons it acknowledges that circumcision of minors has been under heavy fire from bioethics and human rights advocates for many years.

“This is an untested area, but we believe it cannot be ethical for parents to decide to remove a healthy, functional body part from a baby, or for a doctor to perform a medically unnecessary surgery on a patient who has not given his consent. We doubt the law will continue to hold a parent’s consent to be valid”, Mr Mason said.

The RACP also deserved praise for recognising that many men bitterly resent having being circumcised. “Thousands of men in previously circumcising countries (Australia, USA, Canada, UK) are using DIY methods to restore a semblance of their foreskins. Although some men might wish they had been circumcised as a baby, they are far fewer and have an easy remedy – to get circumcised now. It is not so simple for a man whose foreskin was surgically removed when he was too young to protest.”

With fewer than one baby in five circumcised anywhere in Australia these days, and fewer than one in 20 in several states, and virtually no Pakeha or Maori babies circumcised in New Zealand, circumcising for conformity’s sake is a dead issue. “Indeed”, said Ken McGrath, Senior Lecturer in Pathology at Auckland University of Technology, “if parents are worried about peer acceptance, their best plan is to leave the boy’s penis alone.”

Mr McGrath commended the RACP for rejecting the aggressive lobbying of a small pro-circumcision faction, who have been pushing hard for the introduction of near universal circumcision in Australia, supposedly as a public health measure. “Some of the reasons they give for circumcising – such as to prevent splashes on the toilet seat or to avoid zipper injuries – are simply absurd.

“The fact is that the medical arguments for routine (medically unnecessary) circumcision are dead as a doornail.”

Further information

Paul Mason
Commissioner for Children
Tasmania, Australia
+61 438 555 473