Bodily Integrity and the Politics of Circumcision: Culture, Controversy, and Change

Every year 13.3 millions boys and 2 million girls are subjected to circumcision, the involuntary removal of part or all of their external sex organs. Bodily Integrity and the Politics of Circumcision illuminates the vulnerability of human society to medical, economic, and historical pressures. It provides a much-needed, thoughtful, and detailed analysis of the devastating impact of circumcision on bodily integrity and human rights, and it provides hope for change.

PREFACE:

How is it possible that at the beginning of the twenty-first century it is still controversial to suggest that males and females should be allowed to keep all of the body parts with which they are born? Medical science is more advanced today than it has ever been in the history of mankind, and yet the medical profession still tolerates within its ranks the presence of doctors who use the pretense and mask of “science” to advocate and perform an ancient tribal blood rite that amputates and destroys the healthy genital tissue from innocent individuals who are powerless to escape. These individuals are then compelled to spend the rest of their lives with truncated, scarred, blunted, and impaired genitals — a fate they did not choose but one that was forced upon them by a perpetrator driven by something other than the best interest of the child.