These is an extremely important topic for all soon-to-be parents of boys to become informed about. I urge anyone that is about to have a boy to do some time and make practical research on the subject. "Research" does not mean talking to you mates about it, but spending time reading peer reviewed medical studies, while considering those sources and what biases they may have. Then, it is important to weigh the risks vs rewards.

There are so many ill informed comments in this thread, and outright ignorant comparisons made. OML, with all due respect, your comparison to FGM is not helpful in the discussion. Others that say it's natural and it's there for a reason or whatever, should consider that same argument compared to wisdom teeth - they're "natural" yet almost all of us get them removed.

For those that would like to become better informed on the topic, and have 15 minutes to kill and the mental capacity to understand a properly prepared study and report, I urge you to read the American Academy of Pediatrics' thorough review and study of it, found here:

https://pediatrics.aappublications.org/ ... he%20child.

In this report, the Task Force made the following recommendations (there were a few more but these are the important ones):

"Evaluation of the current evidence indicates that the health benefits of newborn male circumcision outweigh the risks, and the benefits of newborn male circumcision justify access to this procedure for those families who choose it.

Parents are entitled to factually correct, nonbiased information about circumcision that should be provided before conception and early in pregnancy, when parents are most likely to be weighing the option of circumcision of a male child.

Male circumcision should be performed by trained and competent practitioners, by using sterile techniques and effective pain management. Analgesia is safe and effective in reducing the procedural pain associated with newborn circumcision; thus, adequate analgesia should be provided whenever newborn circumcision is performed."

I understand the religious, cultural, and personal aspects that affect all our thoughts and opinions on this. Those should play a factor, I guess, but please only comment if you at least understand the medical background of it, found in the link above.

Pros and cons concerning male circumcision

Newborn circumcision remains an area of controversy. Social, cultural, aesthetic and religious pressures form the most common reasons for non-therapeutic circumcision. Although penile cancer and UTIs are reduced compared with uncircumcised males, the incidence of such illness is so low that circumcision cannot be justified as prophylaxis. The role of the foreskin in HIV transmission in developed countries is unclear, and safe sexual practice remains the cornerstone of prevention. There remains a lack of knowledge regarding what constitutes the normal foreskin both among parents and among primary care providers. This lack of knowledge results in a burden of costs to our health care system in the form of unnecessary urological referrals, expansion of wait times and circumcisions. Routine circumcision of all infants is not justified from a health or cost-benefit perspective.

https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC2422979/

Painful Cuts: The Case for Infant Circumcision Is Weakening A popular U.S. tradition is becoming harder to justify.

From a medical perspective, the cumulative evidence appears to arrive at somewhat of a stalemate. Summarized crudely, circumcision's health benefits are too small to recommend, mandate, or routinize the procedure, yet the medical risks are too small to forbid it. Thus, The American Academy of Pediatrics’ official policy states: “Although health benefits are not great enough to recommend routine circumcision for all male newborns, the benefits of circumcision are sufficient to justify access to this procedure for families choosing it.” Families, for their part, are choosing it less often, particularly in the industrial world.

The ethical argument for circumcision is even more difficult to sustain than the medical one, since removing a healthy, functional bodily tissue surgically without consent or medical necessity is quite intuitively seen as a violation of basic individual rights.

Recently, a team of more than 90 medicine, law, ethics, and human rights scholars with expertise in genital cutting authored an international consensus statement on the ethical issues related to circumcision. They write:

“Under most conditions, cutting any person’s genitals without their informed consent is a serious violation of their right to bodily integrity. As such, it is morally impermissible unless the person is nonautonomous (incapable of the consent), and the cutting is medically necessary … a common understanding is that an intervention to alter a bodily state is medically necessary when (1) the bodily state poses a serious, time-sensitive threat to the person’s well-being, typically due to a functional impairment in an associated somatic process, and (2) the intervention, as performed without delay, is the least harmful feasible means of changing the bodily state to one that alleviates the threat."

Clearly, neonatal circumcision fails to satisfy either criterion.

https://www.psychologytoday.com/us/blog ... -weakening

Brian Earp, Associate Director of the Yale-Hastings Program in Ethics and Health Policy at Yale University
In sum, the best evidence suggests that in most cases in the U.S., the potential health benefits gained from neonatal circumcision can be achieved through non-surgical means or through performing the procedure, consensually, later. Neonatal circumcision involves the permanent removal of a healthy, functional bodily tissue without consent or medical necessity, which leaves the procedure standing on thin and slippery (and rapidly melting) ethical ice. No wonder that, increasingly, parents of boys are thinking twice before they choose to cut once.
https://www.psychologytoday.com/us/blog ... -weakening

The case against circumcision
January 2The Journal of Men&#39 s Health & Gender 4(3) DOI: 10.1016/j.jmhg.2007.06.005

In 2004, 57% of boys born in the United States received a medically-unnecessary, non-thera-peutic circumcision at great cost before leav-ing the maternity hospital [1], although there are no medical indications for this amputative operation [2,3]. Alleged advantages rest on claimed, but unproved, prophylactic preven-tion of disease later in life. Complications and risks, however, are clear and immediate. Such circumcisions are not good medical practice and are injurious to the infant [4]. Because the US is the greatest offender, this paper will focus on circumcision as practiced in the US and will explore the
multitude of reasons why circumcision should not be performed and why false claims of benefits are made.

https://www.researchgate.net/publicatio ... rcumcision