The simple case against circumcision says the procedure harms children (since the costs exceed the benefits), and parents shouldn't harm their children. To make this case, you've got to stress the pain of the procedure plus the lost sensitivity. And then compare the benefits: lower risk of various problems, advantages of conformity (if most other boys are circumcised), etc. This is a tricky calculation, so it's understandable that some opponents of circumcision would want to go another route.
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| The open future of an uncircumcised boy |
For example, in a recent issue of the Journal of Medical Ethics,
Robert Darby says circumcision violates a boy's right to an open future. In other words, boys shouldn't be preempted from making this choice for themselves when they're older. But why must they make this particular choice for themselves? In Joel Feinberg's seminal article on this right, he doesn't just hold up an open future as a self-evident good (because the more possible futures the better), but says an open future is good because "self-fulfillment" requires making your own choices. I find that term rather opaque, but "self-fulfillment" is basically "self-actualization," or "becoming who you are," in Nietzsche's phrase. If your parents choose your career for you at age 10, you may wind up a lawyer when the real you is a doctor. Using that reasoning in the present context, the opponent of circumcision has to say newborn circumcision can stop a boy from coming into his real self--if it so happens it would have been truer to the boy's self to have his foreskin.
A compelling argument? I can certainly see that newborn surgeries sometimes conflict with later self-fulfillment--for example, in the case of female "circumcision" and surgery for inter-sex states. But is it really self-defining to have or lack a foreskin? For the vast majority of men, I would think not.
Perhaps the best case against circumcision simply has to do with sovereignty and self-determination, where the body is concerned. My body is my birthright, not to be irreversibly tampered with except in cases of true medical necessity. It may not be terribly harmful to circumcise and may not get in the way of self-actualization, but it's an intrusion upon the boy's private territory, without a good enough reason. When all is said and done, this is the thought I find most compelling.
