Was it easier for Goodluck Caubergs.
Was it easier for Angelo Ofori-Mintah
Was it easier for Amitai Moshe
Was it easier for Celian Monthe Noumbiwe
Was it easier for Oliver Asante Yeboah
To name just five
I had a look at these names. Only one of these circumcisions was carried out at a medical establishment, and the finding was that the GP surgery did not give the right after-care information to the parents.
Amitai Moshe died of SIDS - it was ruled that his death wasn't linked to the circumcision.
For a start it should be possible to require religious groups to use a registered, regulated medical professional trained in circumcision, rather than a Rabbi, and for the surgery to not be done at home and for proper after-care information to be given, though I appreciate that if parents are too uneducated to know how to deal with a medical emergency and do not take the child to A&E straight away, this won't be much help and the safest option is to not have unnecessary surgery, including ear piercing - my daughter's cartilage piercing became infected as she decided to have it done in a shop in Sri Lanka with a friend, rather than waiting and doing it in the UK, where the shop might have been more careful about preventing infections, and I took her to the hotel doctor in Dubai (we were now in Dubai) in case she needed antibiotics and also I was aware of the danger of sepsis though the infection only seemed localised and she did not have a temperature.
That does not mean that individuals won't flout such a law - as they do with the law against FGM - but it helps focus the parents' attention on the risks of circumcision. It is up to the State to publicise and enforce the law by prosecuting parents and people who carryout circumcisions who are not qualified and regulated. Given the more severe and widespread health problems associated with FGM and the more urgent need to protect women who asked for protection, it was important to send a clear message by banning FGM. If there were similar severe and widespread problems associated with circumcision and boys/ men asking for protection it would be consistent to take a similar approach to circumcision.
If there are not severe and widespread problems with circumcision, but it is banned there is the possibility that some people will take their children abroad for the circumcision, so politicians might have also taken this into consideration and decided that education about risks seems a better option for child safety and reducing the practice of infant circumcision rather than a law banning it.
I don't see this as moral cowardice - I think the accusations of moral cowardice are just lazy thinking. It seems more about being practical and realistic about what can actually be achieved. Dismissing the importance and benefits people get from traditions and rituals in their lives is likely to make them more entrenched in their position and put children at risk. Educating them about the risks and changing the law gradually is likely to have more success in influencing people to abandon infant circumcision in favour of circumcision at an older age with the informed consent of the individual. For example, the law passed in Germany stated that the circumcision should not pose a danger to the child's well-being, which allows State intervention if there is evidence that it is posing a danger.
The "danger" wording in the law paves the way to addressing the key issue of the lack of consent by the child to a procedure that carries some risk versus the benefit to the child of being part of their parent's traditions. I think if children perceive that they do not derive a benefit greater than the risk they will not continue the tradition for their own children and it will change or die out. I think it is possible the politicians considered it was overly paternalistic to make that decision for them in relation to circumcision, based on the perceived risks and benefits of circumcision.
