Yes, Ma’am, Women Can and Should Have an Opinion About Circumcising Baby Boys

Jennifer Margulis, PhD

A version of this article was first published on Jennifer Margulis’s Substack, Vibrant Life 

“So, if you have a son, will you have him circumcised?” my friend Martin asked me.

We were on Peachtree Street in Atlanta.

I paused. So startled by the question that I stopped walking.

I was in a Ph.D. program at Emory University and was several years away from thinking about parenting decisions.

“Not my business,” I quipped, “is it? Wouldn’t that would be something for my future husband to decide?”

“Malarkey!” Martin cried. “He’d be your son. It’s something you would absolutely have a say in.”

Isn’t it the father’s choice?

“But my husband would feel more strongly about it than me…” I said, thinking out loud.

“He’s the one with the penis. Ultimately the decision would have to up to him.”

My friend Martin, an internationally recognized human rights activist who’s dedicated his life and career to kindness, justice, and peace between Catholics and Protestants in Ireland, is nothing if not tenacious.

“I totally disagree,” he said. “It’d be as much your decision as his.” He was quiet for a moment. Then he asked, “Would you be open to learning more about it?”

“Of course,” I said.

These were the days before the internet. After Martin returned to Ireland, he mailed me a thick packet of information—xeroxed pamphlets from various organizations—about circumcision.

I read every word, thought about it as hard as it is possible to think about something that has no direct impact on your life at the moment (that you’re aware of, anyway), and filed it away in that part of my brain that stored “very-important-for-later-reference” information.

I was reminded of that conversation with Martin so many years before when I found myself back in Atlanta having brunch with Georganne Chapin, the Co-Founder and Director of Intact America, a non-profit dedicated to ending what they tend to call male genital cutting.

Georganne told me she has people say to her all the time that circumcision is not a woman’s issue. “You’re a woman,” both men and women tell her. “You don’t have a penis! Why do you care about male circumcision?”

Georganne is forthright, direct, and totally unembarrassed.

Just like Martin O’Brien said to me all those years ago, she believes that the idea that a woman cannot have an opinion about male genital cutting is ridiculous.

Here’s why, according to Georganne:

Women, as mothers, give birth to baby boys and make many, if not most, of the decisions about their health and well-being.

If you’re a mom of a baby boy in America, you will likely feel pressured to allow a doctor to cut off an essential part of his genitalia and asked to consent to this surgery.

In the United States, infant circumcision is sold to parents as something that will benefit their boy babies.

Expectant, laboring, and recently postpartum mothers are badgered relentlessly by physicians, nurses, and other health care personnel to consent to a surgery for their newborn baby that is almost always entirely cosmetic and not medically indicated.

Doctors and nurses typically pressure parents to agree to let them perform this surgery done within hours of the baby’s birth.

Indeed, an Intact America survey conducted by a third-party research firm showed that mothers are asked an average of eight times whether they wanted to get their baby boy circumcised.

This occurs at a time when a woman is very vulnerable.

She’s just given birth, and every cell in her body is programmed to protect her newborn child, yet she is pressured to repress that instinct and hand her baby over to strangers in order to cut off part of his genitalia.

Even more egregious, surveys conducted by Intact America show that mothers of boys commonly are told that the surgery is:

1. No big deal (“just a snip”)

2. Painless

3. Safe

4. “More hygienic”

5. Beneficial to their son’s future health

None of these claims, Chapin insists, is true.

The truth is that:

1. Circumcision removes a large amount of the protective covering of the baby’s penis.

2. Circumcision is often excruciatingly painful. Even today, an estimated one-half of all circumcisions take place without anesthetic of any kind. When anesthesia is used, it’s often not used correctly. And once the pain medication wears off, there is an open painful wound.

3. Circumcision interferes with mother-infant bonding and breastfeeding.

4. Complications from circumcision abound. These complications range from minor and transient (for example, excessive bleeding) to serious and long-term (hemorrhaging, life-threatening infections, partial or total amputation of the head of the penis, long-term sexual dysfunction, and even death).

5. The open circumcision wound is exposed to urine and feces in the diaper for several days or weeks thereafter and requires special care to prevent infection and reattachment of raw foreskin. As mentioned above, peeing or pooping on a raw wound hurts.

6. Boys and men in the United States who are circumcised are no healthier and have no fewer genital-related problems than boys and men in countries where circumcision is not routinely performed.

Important protective tissue

The foreskin makes up one-third or more of the penile skin.

It is specialized, double-layered, heavily innervated tissue, designed to protect the head of the penis from abrasion and keep contaminants out of the urinary tract.

Every man whose foreskin has been severed is left with a smaller penis, a penis that has been damaged by the removal of its protective covering, causing the glans (the head of the penis) to dry out and become desensitized over time.

Circumcised men generally have to work harder to reach orgasm, resulting in the “pounding” that American women often complain about.

Tragically, neither men nor women understand that many common sexual problems in our culture—problems often blamed on men’s “insensitivity” toward their female partners—may not be the man’s fault.

Regret moms

Georganne told me that she often hears from mothers expressing deep remorse for having allowed their sons to be circumcised. And she often hears from men—men who are mystified by why their mothers would have signed off on such a damaging surgery.

Increasingly, many of these men are speaking out, risking ridicule, rejection, and broken family relationships.

Women are the mothers, friends, and lovers of circumcised men, making it absurd to claim that circumcision is not a women’s issue.

Denial, fear, embarrassment, and ignorance all interfere with our ability as individuals and as a culture to understand the harm to all of us that results from what really amounts to a mindless assault on the sexual organs of baby boys.

I read every word of the thick packet of information from my friend Martin O’Brien.

When I was researching my book, Your Baby, Your Way, I started talking to people about circumcision—medical professionals in different countries, men with strong opinions (both for and against) from various walks of life. Several Europeans told me they thought circumcision was “barbaric” and could not believe it was still routinely practiced in the United States in the absence of a true medical justification.

I talked to a family member who felt badly about having had part of his penis cut off without his knowledge or consent. Given our Jewish heritage, this was a particularly hard thing for him to say out loud.

I found out that another family member actually had a “botched” procedure and felt self-conscious about his penis. Georganne doesn’t like the word “botched” because, she says, every circumcision damages the penis.

I interviewed a young couple whose son cried every time he got an erection, because skin adhesions from the operation made the erections painful.

In this instance, it’s likely that the doctor removed too much skin, which happens often.

While adhesions can be treated, too much skin removed is usually irreversible, making it impossible for a man to obtain a normal, full erection.

Even circumcisions that are “done right” can ruin a man’s sex life or make his self-conscious about his penis for life.

I also talked to a pediatric urologist who said the majority of her practice was correcting cosmetic problems, functional problems, and serious disfigurement from circumcisions.

And I stopped feeling so nonchalant about the issue.

I now believe that Martin O’Brien and Georganne Chapin are right: circumcision is a woman’s issue.

Mothers absolutely have the right to have an opinion about what happens to their baby boys.

And in an evolved, modern, evidence-based culture there are almost never any legitimate medical reasons to subject newborn boys to an irreversible genital amputation without their knowledge or consent.

About the author: Jennifer Margulis, Ph.D., is an award-winning science journalist, Fulbright grantee, and sought-after speaker.

She writes a popular Substack that has over 20,000 subscribers, Vibrant Life, and is a regular contributor to The Epoch Times. A different version of this article first appeared in print in the magazine Radiant Life.

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