Tide Is Turning Against Circumcision

Posting Date: 04/09/1999

The pendulum is apparently swinging toward an anti-circumcision attitude and it?s about time. This is an issue I?ve crusaded about for over 20 years.

There are now Web sites, mailing lists, bumper stickers, T-shirts and symposiums that oppose circumcision and last month the American Academy of Pediatrics voted to no longer recommend it as a routine procedure.

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Some of the best information on the circumcision issue can be found right here on HealthCentral.com., including a view of an intact male penis.

Here are a few examples of what I?ve seen happening around the country:

--A man who has crusaded against circumcision at baby fairs for years used to be ostracized and avoided. Now, he?s recruiting volunteers because of the attention his information booth receives.

--Radio shock jock Howard Stern has gone on the air and talked about being angry about his own circumcision.

More activists are protesting the procedure as cruel punishment to a male baby who isn?t given a choice.

A group opposed to circumcision, NOCIRC, is gaining support, and founder midwife Marilyn Milos has a bumper sticker reading: "Circumcision is a phallusy."

I applaud all these efforts to halt circumcision in this country where 65 percent of all male babies routinely undergo the procedure, the highest of any industrialized nation.

There?s no medical reason for circumcision and a study we've discussed here on HealthCentral.com shows that women believe intact men make better lovers. For one thing, they haven?t lost the thousands of nerve endings that got lopped off with the male foreskin.