Re:Infants' sense of pain is recognized, finally (1987)
by lmm on Wednesday June 15, 2022 @02:11AM
(#31749670)
> It is absolutely not common practice to allow a mohel to orally suck the blood out of an infant's penis. If it's practiced at all, it is only in extremely fringe groups of Jews, not just orthodox or ultra orthodox but a very small group, truly some hundreds of people, practice it.
They didn't say it was common, they said it was legal. And the practice is known to have caused dozens of HIV cases in New York alone, so I suspect it's a little more than hundreds.
> To call metzitzah b'peh common practice, or at all part of ritual circumcision, is an anti-semitic trope.
And yet the reason it remains legal is lobbying by organisations that represent the Jewish community (or at least claim to - if most Jewish people would support making this this practice illegal (something your post is not completely clear on), you should make that clearer to your representatives).
> There's a lot of discomfort, maybe pain, but as a father of 3, I assure you every doctor's visit and many trips to the park involve similar levels of harm.
Those things don't involve permanent removal of body parts. My objections to nonconsensual circumcision have nothing to do with how painful it is in the moment.
> I realize mohels are not doctors, but there are mohel academies that train and certify these specialists. To say they are not doctors is one thing (and it's true), but to say they are not medically trained is another. They don't go to medical school but they learn about the biology of the procedure, proper methods, proper tools (including sterilization), post-op treatment & care, etc.
To what standard, and how much legal enforcement is there of that?
They didn't say it was common, they said it was legal. And the practice is known to have caused dozens of HIV cases in New York alone, so I suspect it's a little more than hundreds.
> To call metzitzah b'peh common practice, or at all part of ritual circumcision, is an anti-semitic trope.
And yet the reason it remains legal is lobbying by organisations that represent the Jewish community (or at least claim to - if most Jewish people would support making this this practice illegal (something your post is not completely clear on), you should make that clearer to your representatives).
> There's a lot of discomfort, maybe pain, but as a father of 3, I assure you every doctor's visit and many trips to the park involve similar levels of harm.
Those things don't involve permanent removal of body parts. My objections to nonconsensual circumcision have nothing to do with how painful it is in the moment.
> I realize mohels are not doctors, but there are mohel academies that train and certify these specialists. To say they are not doctors is one thing (and it's true), but to say they are not medically trained is another. They don't go to medical school but they learn about the biology of the procedure, proper methods, proper tools (including sterilization), post-op treatment & care, etc.
To what standard, and how much legal enforcement is there of that?