Why are penises still allowed to be mutilated ...

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due to religious beliefs?

Yeah, I know that there's a smaller chance of not catching HIV if you are circumcised (HPV and then cancer due to said HPV too, but hell, that's telling you something anyway if a child gets an STD from unprotected sex), but taking away a child's right to choose whether it's done or not is wrong. A child isn't going to have dangerous unprotected sex anyway until they are of age to choose

And potential side effects from the procedure itself aren't better than the things it may help (which again, mainly help if you're doing dangerous sexual practices).

It boggles the mind.

Anyone know? 'Cause I don't.

Some still see it as a religious requirement, while others still believe it's more hygienic.
One day more people will be enlightened.

What bothers me more, on that score, is those who circumcise women. The brutality of it is detailed in Waris Dirie's story about her early life in Somalia. The detail of it made me sick. Such an abhorrent practice.

It's not because of any religious beliefs, at least not in the US. It's mostly because of peer pressure. Everyone thinks everyone should be exactly the same so they either all have to be Circumcised or Un and right now the trend is circumcision with the CDC encouraging it in the US. They pretty much have everyone believing if the foreskin isn't clipped, the man and his partner are doomed to disease and infection when in reality the behavior is what causes the risk to increase, not the skin on the penis. Any man who doesn't engage in monogamy should be wearing a condom and with one of those a woman has pretty much zero chance of catching anything from a man, clipped or not.

I saw a tweet just recently from the CDC encouraging every man to be circumcised because of some study that claims slight increases in certain diseases and infections for men who aren't and their partners but the increases were not that much and cleanliness and wearing condoms with more than one partner wasn't even mentioned, just this fear factor to get all the men circumcised so they will all be the same, I guess.

I personally think they shouldn't make an issue of it. There are men all around the world who aren't with wives and they all reproduce just fine and the wives do not die of some std only associated with the uncircumcised. If there wasn't a reason for the skin it wouldn't have grew there in the first place so it must have evolved for some reason.

I've seen that too here. Fathers wanting their sons to be the same as them, is a big one too.

I know that Jewish and Muslim religions do it due to religious beliefs, and it kinda caught on in the Catholic Church later on.

I'd be angry if it was done to me against my will, whether done due to religious beliefs or cultural norms. I see it easily equal to sexual abuse in severity (physical abuse of the serious kind in other words).

I know where I live they give the mother a choice, which is good -- but I don't think it's something anyone should have a choice over but the child themselves, when they're older (and kids aren't going to have dangerous sex in most cases, so the possible "benefits" aren't evident anyway).

When you consider the fact they used to not use anesthesia, not sure if they do now or not, and just assumed an infant at that age wasn't capable of any kind of reaction that would affect it for the rest of it's life, makes you wonder, how does it affect the mind? I am not even sure if they use anesthesia these days or not. It seems like it would flood the brain with all sorts of bad trauma chemicals to endure what must seem like a frightening experience and birth is frightening enough why add to it. Once the baby is born, it should be made as comfortable as possible and in a really soothing environment. Birth is one of the biggest traumas any living thing can endure so why not help them out instead of thinking of ways to torment them afterward?

Nobody made this much of a political stink over the removal of tonsils, which children really did not have any say in. We just gravitated away from it as the state of the science changed.

I suspect that the practice of circumcision will fade as the trade-offs and available knowledge change, but until then, doctors will continue truthfully providing new parents with the most accurate information that is available to them, and parents will continue making the best decisions they can for their offspring.

If you would suggest otherwise, then you are an actual idiot.

The brain is not capable of retaining coherent long-term memories until about age 2. There are still people who are unaware of this?

In Islam boys are usually circumcised around 7 years old.
I say only circumcise adults, unless there are real medical reasons for it (which would be extremely rare).

Do you really believe parents always act in the interest of their children? Then why the ridiculous amount of circumcisions that are not medically neccessary (nearly all of them). And female circumcision is certainly not in the interest of the girl, it's just mutilation. Good thing that is banned in most of the civilised world.

Not true. American Jews circumcise due to religious beliefs (I believe all Jews do). When my son was born in 2001, in the part of the US where we lived at the time, there was about a 50/50 rate of circumcision vs. noncircumcision.

I would agree that there is societal pressure to circumcise in the US, though. I know when I was trying to decide what to do with my son, I was told that uncircumcised penises were "ugly." Ummm...I wasn't aware that any of them were "pretty!" LOL!

Children rarely, if ever, have any say in their medical care. Infants never have say in their medical care. Most parents do what they feel is best for their child. Some may make mistakes and some may make decisions based on faulty information, but to say that parents--as a whole--do not act in their child's best interest (or what they believe to be), is flawed, IMHO. There are exceptions, of course...but those are exceptions, not the rule.

Circumcision is a form of mutilation, and I believe it should only be done when medically necessary.

Some parents are negligent. Others bother to get their children circumcised...except in those cases that their doctor has the opinion that the procedure does not confer a medical benefit.

Largely because the doctor recommends the procedure...same reason we used to routinely have tonsils removed. The state of the science may change, just as it did in the case of tonsillectomy.

There are still medical journals that hold that the balance of trade-offs is in favor of circumcision, and as long as there are doctors who use them in making medical decisions, they will continue to recommend it.

That is up to the discretion of the medical authorities in their culture. I cannot find any empirical support for it in western peer reviewed journals, but their medical science may be at a different stage of development.

You could say the same thing about the removal of wisdom teeth and sound just as governed by emotion rather than reason.

My wisdom teeth were never removed, so should I go around demonizing parents who do have this done?

Some dentists recommend early removal, and others recommend having them removed only if necessary. Differing opinions are normal in the practice of medicine.

The removal of the foreskin decreases sexual pleasure. I believe it began as a way to control men's sexuality. The supposed medical benefits are too little to warrant the removal. Do we remove women's breasts so they wont get breast cancer? Circumcision is just as awful. I don't know how a mother could do this to her baby.