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Rethinking Circumcision

The debate is heating up as the medical
profession changes its opinion on the
necessity for circumcision.

0.0THe'S

ENCOUNTERS

ARLENE EHRLICH

Special to The Jewish News

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WERE FIGHTING FOR YOUR LIFE

82

FRIDAY, SEPTEMBER 1, 1989

S

ometimes the ideas
our parents discarded
as absurd and outworn
our own generation redis-
covers as wisdom. In medi-
cine, for example, any number
of once-popular recommenda-
tions — from natural child-
birth to oat bran — fell into
disfavor, only to enjoy
renewed vogue in recent
years. Now the pendulum of
medical opinion has begun to
swing again as doctors re-
evaluate their attitudes
toward the ancient practice of
circumcision.
For Jews, of course, the
question has never arisen.
Ever since Abraham circum-
cised himself and Isaac, his
descendants have sealed their
covenant with God through
the ceremony of brit milah.
Until very recently, a circum-
cised man was almost in-
variably Jewish or Moslem.
The only exceptions were
members of a few African
tribes, English royalty and
the minority of Gentiles who
had undergone the operation
as a medical necessity.
All that changed, however,
around the turn of the cen-
tury, when American physi-
cians began to urge universal
circumcision, albeit for rea-
sons that would have appalled
Abraham. Victorian doctors
believed erroneously that cir-
cumcision would desensitize
the penis and dampen men's
enthusiasm for sex. Not that
the Victorians objected to pro-
creation in its proper place;
rather, they hoped to
eliminate such vices as
masturbation, promiscuity
and homosexuality by taking
away the fun. Unfortunately
for 19th century moralists,
circumcision proved no more
effective as a reverse aphrodi-

siac than had earlier reme-
dies, from graham crackers to
vegetarianism.
American doctors neverthe-
less continued to prescribe
routine circumcision, first to
prevent or cure maladies as
diverse as epilepsy, tuber-
culosis and asthma and, later,
when those diseases failed to
yield, as a simple hygienic
measure. Most pediatricians
believed that newborns feel
little or no pain anyway, so it

Parents today are
being advised of
the medical
benefits and the
inherent
disadvantages of
circumcision.

made sense to cirmcumcise
male infants as a matter of
course. If nothing else, a cir-
cumcised penis is easier to
keep clean.
Besides, nobody wants to
look different from his
friends, and that kind of
embarrassment had become
increasingly likely for uncir-
cumcised boys after World
War II. By the 1970s, up to 80
percent of all American male
infants underwent the opera-
tion, usually at the urging of
their pediatricians. Ten years
ago in this country, no one
could tell the Jews from the
Gentiles in any locker room.
That high tide began to ebb
in 1971, when the American
Academy of Pediatrics and
the American College of Ob-
stetricians and Gynecologists
jointly advised parents not to
circumcise their sons in the
absence of a compelling re-
ligious or medical reason.
And as medical enthusiasm
waned, so did the rate of cir-
cumcision. By the late 1980s,
fewer than half of all parents

