If you’re thinking about circumcising your baby this blog is a MUST READ.

This is an interview with Georganne Chapin, who is the executive director of Intact America. The mission of Intact America is to oppose circumcising of any child’s male or female before they can give consent. Doctors are misleading patients about what happens when you circumcise your baby. This interview is an in-depth look at circumcising, the history, the justification, the contradictions, the risks, why parents do it and so so much more.

How Georganne got involved as an “intactivist”

When I was 10 years old and knew nothing about sex or penises; I had only a sister, mother, and grandmother. Then I had a baby brother and I witnessed a terrible outcome from his circumcision. In my family, we had to deal with that, my mother particularly, and I saw the agony that created. Even though I didn’t have any facts about it, it just stayed in my mind. As something that kind of like, why? Why would we have to do surgery on a newborn baby? That was my thinking at the time. Then I really didn’t mention or think about it until later when I was a graduate student in anthropology and public health. The topic of female genital mutilation started coming up. I began asking people why we condemn this when we do it to our little boys. There was of course a lot of pushback, people continue to insist that it’s somehow different to cut a boy than to cut a girl. I’ve always disagreed with that. 

Then my son was born

Then when my son was born in 1980, my husband and I never even considered circumcising  him. We knew it wasn’t necessary, and why would we inflict that on him? Later on, I became a Healthcare Executive, I had a long career in healthcare and when I was 47 which is in the late 90s I went to law school. Around the same time just really coincidentally my son thanked me. One day we were on a road trip, and he said: “I never thanked you Mom for not letting them circumcise me.” It was the first time I ever thought of circumcision as something with a lifelong impact. He was obviously enjoying his natural self, and I would have even considered depriving him of a body part that had a lifelong function. so that’s really when I started moving from just kind of saying oh it was silly it’s ridiculous not necessary that’s when it kind of coalesced with my earlier observations that this was something really not just traatic to do to a baby but something that really would last a lifetime the negative consequences or the positive consequences of keeping your own body. 

When I was in law school I wrote a paper for a bioethics class about circumcision. This made everything come together; my son thanking me, my career in healthcare and then becoming a lawyer. I became an activist, an “intactivist,” as we call ourselves. I got involved with a group of people who had been fighting circumcision for many years for decades. In 2008 with a private donation and collaboration with this group of people, we formed Intact America. Intact America is 14 years old and by far the largest anti-circumcision organization. We have a very small but mighty paid staff, some earnest volunteers, and tens of thousands of followers on our website and social media, so we’re an extensive organization with a large following. We have a growing image as a han rights organization. We’re talking about the right of every person to keep the body that that nature or God or whatever your belief system is, but we know nature gave them. 

Shelly: I 100% agree with your stance on this topic. I had two girls and a boy, and I will say that if I had a boy first, he probably would have been circumcised. At that time, I had no idea, I thought it was just something you do. That you have to do and it was just this automatic thing that you do. I didn’t know, for example, that most of the world doesn’t circumcise babies routinely. 

Who tends to circumcise? What is the history of circumcising? 

I know in the U.S. it was routine and still routine in a lot of areas but why do we do it so routinely in the U.S.? When the rest of the world tends not to? 

Georganne: It started in the Victorian era, which was the 1870s – 1980s before the germ theory of disease had taken hold. Before, Western doctors knew what caused so many conditions and diseases. There was a tremendous amount of sexual repression at that time. Boys masturbated, as men and women have throughout history, which was seen as dangerous and threatening to the social order. Threatening to a male’s life, the spilling of sperm was thought to put him in a weakened state. 

You’re right though, America is the only country United States the only country that routinely circumcises baby boys anymore. That era started as a custom in the English-speaking world, so England, Canada, the United States, Australia, and New Zealand all began circumcising  baby boys. Circumcising started with teenagers as a way to discourage them from masturbating. Then as obstetrics became the specialty and childbirth moved from being a woman-centered activity into hospitals, doctors started circumcising  newborn baby boys. It’s a lot easier to cut off a foreskin of a two-day-old baby or a one-day-old baby than it is to catch a 14-year-old and tie them down and cut off part of his penis that the part that he enjoys. So that’s how it evolved, starting in the 1920s and 1930s when childbirth took place more routinely in hospitals. The obstetrician was the one performing the circumcision. Interestingly though, being circumcised was kind of a status symbol. This was because it meant that the mother had the resources and the money to have her baby delivered in a hospital. 

Then by the 1940s, circumcision became pretty routine. However, then it diverged because England developed the National Health Service and there were a lot of controversies. There were a lot of facts circulating about circumcision that it wasn’t necessary. So England said well it’s not necessary we’re not going to pay for it. Then on the other hand, the U.S. has a privatized medical system, and circumcision was a fee that could be charged to the parents or later the insurance companies. So that’s really how it took hold in the U.S. 

For the rest of the 20th century circumcision became firmly incensed in American medicine. However, in some, England left it aside, Australia dropped it, and New Zealand dropped it around 1970. It just became an American custom. 

So the U.S. remains the only Western country that, for non-religious reasons, circumcises boys. Of course, there’s the Muslim culture and in Israel circumcision is a routine practice but it’s not a medical practice. They don’t consider it for medical reasons it’s considered a religious custom. However, even still in Israel, there are a growing nber of intact boys and families keeping their children intact. Today many are observant instead of practicing brisk cutting. They practice something called “bratello” which is a peaceful welcoming ceremony without the cutting. Lots of American Jews do that, as well as Jews around the world. It’s not by any means universal among Jews. So while it is on the decline, it is still very prominent in the U.S. 

Is circumcising declining at all in the U.S.? 

G: We think so, the heyday of circumcision was in the 1970s in the U.S. The statistics are terrible, but it’s safe to say that at that time 85% – 90% of American boys were being cut. This translates into probably 75% of adult American men today missing a part of their body stolen from them when they were a couple of days old. The implications of that for our culture are astonishing. Most men walking around today in the U.S. except immigrants from countries that don’t circumcise, are missing that body part, and their partners have similarly not ever seen an intact male penis. So the impact on our culture of having most of the males minus their natural foreskins is devastating. 

Where do people circumcise the most, geographically?

I’ve seen official statistics showing that over 55% of baby boys are still circumcised. It is very prevalent in the Midwest and less prevalent on the coasts. However, it varies, even within cities, depending on the hospital. Some are big circumcising  hospitals, and some are a lot less. It’s still a fee regardless of surface medical procedures. We know that women who give birth in American hospitals are heavily lobbied to cut their babies. Intact America does surveys on various circumcision-related topics, and we did a survey a couple of years ago. We found that 94% of women who had given birth in the last three years had been pressured to circumcise their sons. They had been asked, some numerous times, and some even described it as coercion. So that shows you how prevalent the selling of circumcision is, and the average number of asks was eight times. 

If they had not been asked, would they have circumcised their son? 

Upwards 40% of women said yes, so it’s still, as you said, probably something that too many women see as a default. However, the number of people in our survey who submitted to circumcising their sons was way higher than that due to the asking. Had they not been asked, they would not have done it, and because they were acting on pressure, far more agreed on circumcising their sons. 

We hear from thousands and thousands and thousands of parents who have regret. Parents who feel they were railroaded into it and they didn’t have enough facts and also often in a state of postpartum exhaustion, sometimes under the influence of drugs and somebody slaps a consent form in front of you, and I just want to go back to sleep or be a good patient. 

A lot of times, the risks of circumcising are downplayed tremendously. 

G: Yes, in fact, it’s outright lying. They’ll say things like, 

• It’s not going to hurt 
• It only takes a second 
• He won’t feel a thing 
• he’ll be fine 
• it’s better 
• there’s no difference 
• this way, you can keep him clean

I mean, who doesn’t want to keep their baby clean? However, your baby wears a diaper that’s going to be filled with urine and feces, and there’s nothing clean about circumcising  a baby. Infection risk, healing, and not to mention the impact on his sexual pleasure, and that’s an uneventful circumcision; there are lots of complications. 

Providers are questioning circumcising, too.

S: I like your point that sometimes it depends on where you’re located too. I’m located right outside of Boston, and I’ve been working in the hospital system for almost ten years now. I feel like there has been a shift, at least in the hospital where I worked when I first started. A couple of months ago, I was in a room where the family asked to have the baby circumcised. The OB said four times, “this is not medically necessary; if you are choosing to do this is not for medical reasons.” Then the doctor would ask again if they still want to do this. Then the parents would say “yes.” So she would repeat it; she said it four times, almost like she was trying to talk them out of it. Now, some providers in hospitals won’t do them at all. I think, at least in my area; there has been I shift over the last ten years. 

Circumcising DOES hurt AND comes with risks

G: That’s wonderful, and you just wish every mom having a baby could be in an environment where they’re told the truth. Starting with the fact that it’s not medically necessary. Though it’s much more powerful to say this harms your baby, this is taking away a body part that belongs to him, and that has function and brings pleasure. So that would be the next step for the doctors to say it does hurt, and it is risky. However, most doctors are not quite there yet. 

Shelly: I do still see some untruths; I’ve been in the nursery, and I will walk out because I can’t stand to be in the room when they’re doing the actual procedure. I can still hear the baby screaming, and the nurse will bring the baby back to the room and say, “oh, he slept through the whole thing.” That’s not true; it’s not true the baby did not sleep. I know they’re saying that to make the parents feel better, but you’re lying to the parents. If the baby didn’t cry, it’s probably because they completely shut down from the pain. 

G: When I hear that too, “oh, I work, , in a hospital, and the babies just sleep through it.” That’s like saying the baby slept through, getting his fingernails ripped out. This is an extremely traumatic procedure, even if an anesthetic is used. For decades nothing was used; the baby was just immobilized. Even with an anesthetic, a penile block, you’re injecting painkillers into the base of the penis, three injections. Think about what that feels like in your mouth if you’re going to get a filling or something. Then the topical anesthetic is not effective at all, so how anybody can deny the pain that it causes? 

We don’t remove other genitals for similar reasons that we are circumcising. Why are we doing this?

We have many stories of 18 – 22-year-olds who were told the same garbage by doctors who wanted to cut them. 

• “It’s fine. You won’t notice any difference.” Well, if you won’t notice anyway, why are you doing it?
• Another common one is, “it’s going to have to be done at some point, so you might as well do it now.” That’s given as an excuse to parents; no, it will not have to be done at some point. 

Further, most medical problems that foreskin could present an issue have other less invasive treatments. We don’t cut off woman’s labia because they have a blister. We don’t cut off women’s genitals because they get urinary tract infections. Girls get more urinary tract infections than boys, and can be treated with simple antibiotics. About $0.50 worth of antibiotics will cure a urinary tract infection. The pathologies presented as justification for circumcision are not justifications for circumcision.

Justifications for circumcising

Shelly: I know there are many talks that circumcision reduces the risk of STDs, which I don’t think is even true.  

G: No, there’s no proof of that. The data that is cited, now, and they’re starting to say this less because there’s absolutely no proof, this is based on these very unethical studies conducted in sub-Saharan Africa. Among mostly marginally literate or illiterate adult men who were essentially coerced into giving up their foreskins with the rationale that they wouldn’t get HIV from women. Done kind of assembly line style; they’re often given food, money, and supposedly for transportation. Then they are cut loose into the world with this illusion that they’re not going to get HIV because they’re circumcised.

However, in Western countries where research has been done on sexually transmitted diseases, including HIV, there’s no evidence to support the claim that circumcision reduces the transmission of sexually transmitted infections. The military has done studies, but this is the history of circumcising in the U.S. 

There are these bogus claims:

• It’ll stop masturbation
• It’ll cure tuberculosis 
• It’ll prevent mental illness 

These were all the 19th century claims things we didn’t know, but circumcision will just fix them right up. You won’t have any of those problems; those were blatant untruths and lies. 

The matter of cleanliness without circumcising 

Again, who wants to have a dirty baby or a dirty penis? Nobody stops to think; you can wash it. You can teach your child to read, do math, and woodworking, send your child to college or not, or to vocational school, and your child can become a master Carpenter or a physicist or a software developer and they can’t learn to wash their genitals? I mean, it’s so absurd you teach them. Just like you teach them to brush their teeth, it probably feels less pleasurable than washing your penis in the shower. There’s nothing inherently dirty about the han genitals. We don’t need to be obsessed about cleaning genitals; just regular old bathing it’s just fine. The foreskin does not detach from the head of the penis until the boy is older and sometimes as old as their late teens. 

The medical system that loathes the foreskin

Boys kept intact don’t stop being potential prey victims of a medical system that loathes the foreskin. We get reports every day from parents who’ve taken their child to the doctor or the emergency room, their intact child. The doctor or nurse has grabbed that child’s penis and forced back the foreskin. Which breaks the adhesion of the glass penis to the head of the penis. Creating immense pain, bleeding, the possibility of infection, and terrible traa. A story came out in a paper in North Dakota about a parent whose child was forcibly retracted in the emergency room with the excuse that he needed a catheter. You don’t need to retract a child to put in a catheter forcibly. 

Sadly, this story is probably repeated thousands of times a week around the U.S. by Doctors and nurses, despite the American Academy of Pediatrics saying a male’s foreskin should never be forcibly retracted. It will retract on its own when it’s time. Even though the AAP says that doctors and nurses insist that this is necessary and they tell parents, they should be doing it. That creates terrible harm and doesn’t end with keeping your son intact. That’s important for people to know. You’re going to have to fight off the circumcision culture. It doesn’t end with adulthood, either. 

We have a story from a man who, when he was 18, went for his college physical, and the doctor told him, “you might as well get that taken care of right now. You have to have it cut off eventually, so you might as well do it before you go to college.” He realized immediately, and he said it was against his better judgment, but he went along with the doctor. Immediately after, he realized that he had lost sensation. 

Deciding against circumcising your child

Shelly: I would say that the biggest challenge of keeping my son intact was that I was shocked at the pushback I received. I homeschooled, I had home births, and I got a little bit of pushback for those. However, when I said that I wouldn’t have my son circumcised, it was much more of a pushback. Which surprised me because in my head, I thought, why is my son’s penis your business anyway? The ridiculous things are thrown at me like ‘oh no girl’s ever going to want to have sex with him because he’s going to smell so bad’ and ‘he’s going to get STDs.’ Even back then, when I didn’t know that much, I still knew those were ridiculous statements. Then making sure that every time I brought him to the doctor, they wouldn’t pull back on his foreskin. Every time I left him with someone to watch him, they knew 100% that they should not pull back on the foreskin. None of my family and friends had ever cared for an intact baby. 

G: they thought there was something they had to do right instead of just leaving the child alone. 

What about being intact in the elder years?

S: I know when this topic is brought up in Facebook groups. There are a lot of people, especially people who work in assisted living with the elderly, who talk about the issues they have now. That it smells bad, but that’s also the time when a lot of foreskin was probably being pulled back 

G: What did they do to take care of women? Women’s genitals excrete smegma also, and I’m pretty sure they’re way more old ladies in these assisted living/nursing homes than there are old men. What are they doing? Have you ever had anybody say that’s a reason to shave off all the outer genitalia from women? It just has to be washed right. 

S: I’ve said this at one point because if you are responsible for bathing this person, you’re saying that this person’s penis smells all the time. Who is to blame here? If they can’t bathe themselves, and you are responsible for bathing them, then you’re not doing your job correctly if there’s still smell after.

G: This person has lived with his foreskin for 80 – 90 years, and presumably, he’s gotten plenty of pleasure and use out of it. It never caused him any trouble. So why are we using this as an excuse to cut a baby boy’s penis? You don’t have to cut a non-consenting child. 

Why don’t we just remove the breasts of all girls? In America, women have a one in eight chance of developing breast cancer sometime over a lifetime. Males have a one in a hundred thousand chance of developing penile cancer. It can occur in intact and circumcised boys as well. Intact AND circumcised men, usually old men, so one in a hundred thousand, and we’re talking about cutting off 100% of foreskins. On the other side, one in eight for breast cancer, and we would be appalled at the idea of prophylactically removing the breast buds of every girl. Even if it would make her chances of getting breast cancer nil. 

That’s a ridiculous comparison, and you have one penis; it’s a functional body part. We don’t cut off people’s fingers. Why don’t we take out people’s fingernails so they won’t get fungus under them? That’s ridiculous. Why is that more ridiculous than cutting off a part of somebody’s penis? 

Shelly: I’m so glad you said that because that is the exact argent I used with a family member. This family member would say, “he’ll get penile cancer.” I said something along the lines of “my daughter has a greater chance of getting breast cancer. So should I remove her breasts now?” I think my daughter was two at the time, and this family member didn’t have a response to that.

People will look for defenses FOR circumcising.

G: It’s very common for people to look for defenses that they’ve never even used in the past, and they don’t know anything about right because it’s threatening to hear. Especially if you’ve made the decision to cut your child or if you’re a doctor who has cut a child or persuaded/lied to parents so that they’ll cut their children. Circumcision hurts, and you told them it doesn’t hurt. It’s natural for people who are complicit to make these excuses and defenses. However, they’re all ridiculous, and none make any sense. It doesn’t make sense to remove a normal, healthy, protective, pleasurable body part. It doesn’t make any sense to remove the foreskin. Then to remove it from somebody else who cannot understand what it means. Who cannot give consent? It’s a travesty. 

Shelly: there’s so much more about childhood trauma now and how it impacts you for the rest of your life. I can’t help but wonder how traumatic circumcision is for babies.

G: Our website, intactamerica.org, has a section on adverse childhood experiences. Dan Bollinger who’s an Intact America board member and volunteer. We have written a paper about circumcision as an adverse childhood experience. We are lobbying for circumcision to be added as genital cutting to the inventory of adverse childhood experiences. It’s considered controversial when it’s so obvious. The reason is that the status quo is extremely powerful, and then if you combine that with the medical and industrial complex and the compulsion to do medical procedures and charge for them. The medical system prays on men with foreskins. I’ve said in the past, but it’s like the foreskin has a barcode on it. If you could just grab that foreskin, take it, then there’s a claim that can go into the insurance company or Medicaid. Making everybody at the hospital, the doctors and the nurses who helped, complicated. 

How babies react to circumcising

Shelly: As a lactation consultant, I see babies shut down after circumcision. Anywhere from four to twelve hours, the baby will not eat. They’ve just shut down; they just want to sleep. The parents at my facility are told it’s because of the Tylenol they give them. Providers give Tylenol before they do the circumcision; for their parents, it’s the Tylenol that makes them super sleepy. However, what’s going on is they went through this traumatic procedure. Now they’ve just shut down because they’re only one, two, three days old, and you’re putting them through this excruciating, unnecessary surgery. 

Sometimes if a family struggles with breastfeeding, I’ll try to nudge them to at least delay the circumcision if they’re completely set on having it. I’ll tell them to wait because when your baby’s already struggling, it’s not going to help anything at all.

G: There are so many contradictions that people don’t see or ignore them. You hear that it’s harmless, but doctors don’t do it on a baby that’s not medically stable. However, if it’s really harmless, if they don’t feel a thing, it’s not traumatic, and it won’t interfere with breastfeeding, then why do we put that caveat in there that the baby has to be medically stable? Little preemies, don’t get circumcised. Why? If it’s nothing, if it’s harmless, if it’s beneficial, if they just sleep through, it why wouldn’t you do it on a preemie? I’m not advocating circumcising preemies. What I’m saying is, how contradictory that is. You would protecting a medically fragile child from circumcision but promote it as a completely harmless, routine, painless procedure, with no negative consequences. 

Complications with Circumcising babies

Shelly: Babies die. I don’t think enough people know that babies die from circumcision. Years ago, there was a whole controversy over giving children hot dogs. Parents were advised to cut hot dogs in half and across because a certain nber of young babies had died eating them. I remember seeing this and thinking, but more babies die a year from circumcision, and nobody’s talking about that.

G: The reasons given when a baby dies of circumcision, and I know it’s from circumcision. You’ll see it was because he bled to death, went into shock, had Cardiac Arrest, a massive infection, herpes infection, whatever the reasons are given, on the death certificate. Well, why does a newborn baby bleed to death? A newborn baby doesn’t just spontaneously develop an open wound and then bleed to death. So circumcision is not listed as the cause of death. Then the parents of the baby find out there was a bleeding disorder. You’re circumcising a newborn; you have no idea had a bleeding disorder.

Shelly: We had something happen in our family, I won’t go into much detail about protecting my son’s privacy, where circumcision was being recommended. I think he was maybe 12 or 13 at the time to address an issue that had nothing to do with the foreskin or anything like that. Thankfully my husband was born in Colombia and, in his culture is not circumcised. My husband told the doctor no, we’re not doing that. I often wonder what would have happened if my husband had not been from a culture that did not routinely circumcise.

G: You’re always vulnerable when you go to a physician. There’s a power relationship; that’s very common. This provider speaks with this voice of authority; why would they be saying that if it wasn’t true? We also don’t want to believe that doctors are just trying to make money off of us. We kind of know globally that doctors are making because they have to make money of course we all have to make a living. However, to translate that into this intimate relationship where this person has your health and hopefully your well-being in their hands. You don’t really want to be that skeptical.

Why are parents circumcising?

S: I want to change the topic a little bit, to reasons why parents circumcise their baby and how ridiculous some of them are. I think the one that makes me roll my eyes the most is: the father is circumcised and they want the baby to look like a father. I never quite understood that one because of having girls first. I was like is this something where the father takes his son on a camping trip? They both whip out their penis, and dad says see we’re both we both look alike so I guess we’re related. This just never made sense to me to cut off a piece of your baby’s skin so that your genitals look similar.

G: Which of course they don’t. What about the hair? What about the testicles? Surely the father has hairy testicles. What about the size? I mean does it make sense to inject dye into your child’s eyes? So they’ll have the same color eyes that you do because everybody sees your eyes. It’s clearly absurd. 

However, I think it runs pretty deep because it’s a roundabout way of justifying there’s nothing wrong with the father. You have to think about the fact that he thinks you’re telling him there’s something wrong with his penis.  So saying well you’re the man and you have the penis and if you want your son to look like you is a kind of back door way of saying I think you’re fine I think you’re okay please don’t feel bad.  

I have talked to several women who were just so angry at their husbands for failing to want to protect their sons from circumcising. However, these guys are probably going through their trauma for the first time in their lives. He doesn’t like thinking about the fact that this was done to him. 

If you could only tell parents one thing about circumcision, what would it be?

G:  Your baby doesn’t want to be circumcised. Your baby doesn’t need to be circumcised. It’s going to hurt your baby now and it’s going to permanently damage his sexual future. At its best, that’s with no implications, this was no complications. At its best, it will limit his sexual pleasure forever and immediately it will cause him just having come out of a peaceful womb into a tough world. It will cause him immediate pain and suffering and it will cause you a lot of trouble. Think about it, who wants to be doing wound care on a newborn? You have to get used to having this baby at home. You have to take care of yourself after delivery, whether vaginal or cesarean. You have to get your sleep, baby’s got to get sleep. Your family has to be integrated in a different way, a new person in the household, all of these things. Why would you want to add to that wound care, bandages, vaseline, possibly an infection, blood in the diaper, and worried about the feces getting into the wound? It’s absurd. So your baby doesn’t need to be circumcised. You can protect your baby. You’re the protector.