Mothering magazine article about the decision on circumcision.

Although medical standards require the expectation that a proposed treatment will provide more benefit than harm, the survey by Fletcher and associates found that more than half (53 percent) of circumcising physicians said they personally feel neonatal circumcision causes more harm than benefit" yet they continue to perform the procedure. And while parental permission is understood to be ethically legitimate only for medical treatment deemed of urgent necessity to a child, the American Medical Association has issued a position statement identifying neonatal circumcision as a nontherapeutic procedure with no medical indication.

 

For these reasons, it is becoming increasingly clear that neonatal circumcision, as routinely performed in the US, does not fulfill the requirements for parental permission or informed consent.

Attorney Ross Povenmire put the issue in more graphic terms in an article in the Journal of Gender, Social Policy, and the Law: "The amputation of the male foreskin in the United States is unique in medical practice for not requiring any medical justification, and for the widely accepted view that the amputation may be authorized at the sole discretion of a parent. This attitude is completely at odds with legal and medical practice regarding other forms of amputation and must be challenged."