I know many family lifestyle writers and baby businesses avoid taking a position on genital integrity for fear of alienating followers or losing customers.
I’ve already been cold-shouldered by otherwise open-minded mama friends who still refuse to acknowledge the truth of neonatal circumcision’s damage.
So, I will be clear and sharp as an icicle:
Mama’s Milk, No Chaser believes that bodily integrity is a human right.
The “No Chaser” part of this blog’s title refers to anything that could act deleteriously upon the natural, ideal gifts a Mama has to give her baby — which include nursing (even the non-breastfeeding type), peacefulness and respect, and a grizzly bear-like promise of protection.
Not only has neonatal circumcision been shown to harm breastfeeding (more on that here), its inherently violent nature opposes the very concept of attentive, peaceful parenting. In every single instance of neonatal circumcision, the affected minor is unable to express prior consent. I’m big on consent. I don’t doubt that a lot of us are.
Ignorance is a Killer
I implore you to question and then research this cosmetic surgery, as you would with any surgery that might, by contrast, be medically necessary.
I know firsthand that the journey down the rabbit-hole of shocking discovery is a grisly and seemingly never-ending one, especially as our science and health communities have only just begun to scratch the surface of long-term harms. So, for sake of maintaining your emotional sanity and in the interest of time… perhaps don’t research circumcision.
Why not? Well, should it really take more than the simplest logic to understand that forcing surgical tools upon a child’s restrained body while he screams is, um, questionable, to say the least?
So, do or don’t research circumcision — but no matter what, definitely, definitely research foreskin. For the shunning and shushing that befalls the loudest and boldest of genital integrity advocates, I blame our culture’s longtime lack of veritable knowledge about the foreskin.
In one way or another, all of the following aspects collude like parts of some monstrous machine to override Motherly Instinct and Mother Nature’s perfectly-evolved plan: Partners’ or doctors’ uninformed opinions; culturally biased misconceptions; unbroken chains of violence linking both generations ancient and new; fears of falling too deeply into the dark rabbit-hole of truth; and the heavyweights of cognitive dissonance.
It would greatly behoove our generation of parents to spend time researching this necessary organ with which all mammals of both sexes are born. It is, I think, the key to understanding the gravity of loss that a long lineage of American males have spent entire lifetimes without. It’s time to break the chains of violence and let our sons keep what many of their fathers never could.
(I welcome you to read my next post devoted to foreskin facts).
The Foreskin Reaper
Every week in America, yet another baby boy succumbs to the ultimate consequence by the credit of a barbaric, terrifically senseless tradition.
He dies, that is.
And, worst of all, the mortal loss is 100% preventable. At least 117 babies die per year in the U.S. alone as a direct result of this routine procedure. That’s one out of every 77 male neonatal deaths. (Point of reference: at least 115 babies die per year due to SIDS). Isn’t it extreme enough if only ONE case like this happened, ever?
This sad fact alone is reason enough to question, to wonder — is this even necessary? Only 1 in 16,667 males will actually require a therapeutic circumcision later in life. 1 in 11,100 DIES as a result of his non-therapeutic routine circumcision, meaning a boy has a much greater chance of dying from the procedure than ever needing it for a valid medical reason in the first place.
Has our nation become so deaf to the screams and cries of babies on the operating table/medieval torture board that we no longer notice when they stop crying….forever?
I’ll take a cold-shoulder from a friend over the cold, lifeless body of an innocent child any day.
Read more:
Nurses for the Rights of the Child
Stanford School of Medicine – From the site: “The information contained in [this site’s] links…is intended for health care providers who are caring for newborns in a setting where circumcision might be desired by the parents.”
Mama's Milk, No Chaser 
Yes, yes, yes!! It really blows my mind this is still a common procedure. I feel like people should have woken up decades ago and stopped mutilating boys’ genitals for cosmetic purposes decades ago, it seems that foreign to me. It’s just so sad, babies are born perfect.
Circumcision is not routine here in the UK but I love this post