But you made your point about an “infant boy”. To now make an analogy with abortion is clearly irrelevant and evasive.
You stated that decisions about medical procedures for conditions that aren’t immediately threatening should be postponed until the child can be consulted (the age for which you apparently see as around 5 years). I asked if you felt that applied to cleft palate, and you said (in a somewhat indirect way) that you did.
I see that as a discussion investigating the issue of medical consent for and by young children. If you see it as “penis hate” I suppose that’s your privilege.
Not really. At their core, they’re about the exact same thing. Bodily domain.
Example age, not intended in any way to be anything but an example. You can consult the child at any age. The value of your responses will varry, but you have to wait until you can get a meaningful response if you aren’t dealing with something that is medically urgent.
It applies to any form of cosmetic modification.
Good. That would be the correct interpretation.
What I see as penis hate is the constant comparisons of a healthy, intact organ to tumors, birth defects, and various other deformities.
I see them as substantially different, due to the very different ages to which they apply, and the corresponding difference in what is actually happening when the prospective patient gives or withholds consent. You have made it clear that you make little to no distinction based on age. We will have to agree to disagree on that.
So you’re saying that it’s impossible for someone to be circumcised at an age when they would be able to get an abortion if they had been female? That’s certainly news to me.
It does seem that we have an irreconcilable difference here. I view children of any age as full human beings worthy of all the rights and respect that implies. You apparently view them as something else.
So were you just not reading the thread, or are you just assuming all those people talking about deformities and tumors are just rambling off topic?
No, I was addressing myself to your example of the 5-year-old boy (as I’m quite sure you’re aware).
(So you feel 5-year-olds should be allowed to vote?)
No one disputes that children are human beings. Essentially everyone views very young humans as less capable that adults in some significant ways, making it important for parents to act in what the parents judge to be the child’s best interests.
No, I think they were addressing aspects of the debate. I know that I, for one, was not comparing “a healthy, intact organ to tumors, birth defects, and various other deformities” as your whimsy would have it. Mischaracterizing an opponent’s statements is not the hallmark of a sincere debater.
5 year old girls have been in the position of requiring abortions…
I believe that infants should be allowed to vote if they can demonstrate a clear desire to do so. (I don’t think they can demonstrate such a desire, but that doesn’t change the standard I’m using here. The only requirement for suffrage should be an opinion and a desire to have that opinion counted. Otherwise you don’t have a legitimately democratic system.)
And I’m still waiting for the explaination for why it is in the child’s best interests to have his bodily domain violated and a healthy part of his anatomy amputated in a purely cosmetic procedure that can be done just as well after he’s capable of saying yea or nay.
Then would you care to take this oportunity to clarify your statements? After all, if I’ve misinterpreted your position, I’d like to find out what it really is, so we can move forward with the debate from there.
Did we not already establish that minors were entitled to abortion without parental consent in certain jurisdictions? Are we going to need to start repeating ourselves from the beginning?
On what grounds should anyone be granted suffrage? Fact of the matter is that the central premis of a democratic society is that if you are subject to its laws, you deserve some say in how those laws are made. Unless you are advocating that minors not be subject to the law (and juvenile courts and the like don’t actually change that they are criminally liable, just the specific penalties), they must be given equal representation.
I’m curious, but would removal of the outer labia of a woman have similar benefits?
I think circumsision is an unnecessary surgery that’s supported on a cultural and a relgious basis rather than a medical one.
The hygiene issues is a non-starter to anyone who bathes or who has some saliva in their mouth and a finger.
The protection against HIV may actually be a bad thing as evidently rates of HIV infection in Africa have gone up circumsized males due to the fact that they believe their new “natural protection” obviates the need for condoms.
So all in all I’m very surprised by the CDC and I don’t intend on every having this elective and unnecessary surgery performed on any son of mine.
This is a tautology, of course. But if you pay more attention to your nose when you interact with members of the general public, you may find that bathing is not the popular activity that some of us think it is.
All other considerations aside, just don’t think removing functioning body part from an infant who can’t give consent is ethical. Barring that which would save their life or improve their immediate health, of course.
Why can’t we let people make their own choice about the surgery? If the benefits only arise after they become sexually active, there is no reason to perform the surgery before that point.
I can’t help but think it’s because very few teenage boys or men would choose elective amputation of their functioning foreskin (which I will say, as I haven’t seen it mentioned before, is a big part of sexual pleasure if you have one). Obviously there is some sort of agenda here.
I know people say that comparing female circumcision to male is a straw man, but I disagree. There are many different degrees of female circumcision, it is true, but the labia minora and clitoral hood are extremely similar in form and function to the foreskin, and yet everyone agrees that ‘parental choice’ has no place in discussions of whether or not it is ethical to amputate the labia minora of infant girls…
Your next step is to show that in the case (or another of the same age), the girl in question was entitled to abortion without parental involvement. I’m going to guess that in 1939 Peru this was not the case.
And why is that my next step? The laws that cover abortion for minors occasionally rely on the lower limit of pregnancy to serve as the lower boundry for that right. If it’s possible to get pregnant at that age, then all 5 year olds will have that legal right protected.
