The Snip Snip

After reading Arkansas Mom's wonderful posts on circumcision, I decided that'd make a good first blog. However, she is much more well-spoken than myself, so I suggest you mosey on over and read hers as well.

First of all, watch this video. It's full of great information, including pictures. As they say, a picture is worth a thousand words.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=WJGKvXU8Aog

If you live in America, chances are that you are either circumcised if you are a male, or you have been with and likely prefer a cut penis. This is because America is the only country in the western world that performs routine infant circumcision, or RIC. Why, you might ask? Initially it was at the urging of men like Dr. Kellogg. Yep, the Cornflakes guy. Back in the late 1800's, masturbation was thought to be the cause of anything and everything, from STIs to mental illness to blindness. Kellogg supported circumcision at birth without any pain relief so that the child's first experience with his penis would be a negative one. He also called for infant females to have carbolic acid put on their clitoris. These procedures were supposed to curb masturbation.

By the time it was realized that it did not indeed curb masturbation, it was preached as cleaner. Only those dirty immigrants were uncut. This is of course, completely false. Until the foreskin naturally retracts, generally between toddler age and puberty age, it is fused to the glans much like a fingernail to a finger, and self cleaning. It should never be manually retracted, as this can cause problems and is painful for the child...after all, imagine cutting your thumbnail off with a razorblade...yeah, it's worse than that. After it retracts, all the cleaning it needs is simply soap and water. Does it take a few seconds longer to get clean? Yes. But I can assure you I'd much rather spend an extra 5 seconds to thoroughly clean myself over undergoing FGM(female genital mutilation) to save that tiny amount of time.

Another reason people use to circumcise is that studies show that HIV is 50% more likely to occur in intact men in Africa. While many, myself included, wonder about the validity of those studies, for this entry's sake let's go with it and say that being intact makes you 50% more likely to get HIV. Let's compare it to breast cancer. By breastfeeding her children, a woman lowers her risk for breast cancer. Just like being cut lowers the risk of HIV. However, is that to say breastfeeding mothers never get cancer? Of course not. Does that mean formula feeding moms are all cancer ridden? Certainly not. Wouldn't it be better in the case of breast cancer to just do monthly breast checks, and then mammograms once you hit that time in your life, regardless of how you fed your child as a baby? Just like a good sex education and using condoms without fail will prevent males, both cut and intact from getting HIV. As far as STDs in our country, while cut men had a lower incidence of syphilis and HIV, they had higher rates of herpes, hepatitis, and chlamydia. So sex education and using condoms it the way to prevent STDs, not circumcision.

Now, some of you may heard that it's beneficial to circumcise due to the fact they reduce the chances for penile cancer and UTIs. Now, 1 in 100,000 men will get penile cancer in our country. That means that, assuming circumcision prevents penile cancer, 99,999 infant boys will undergo a completely worthless circumcision. I might also add that is does occur in cut men, so obviously circumcision is not effective at eliminating it. 1 in 100 intact infants will get a UTI, or urinary tract infection. While uncomfortable, they are easily treatable with antibiotics, and prevent 99 other boys from undergoing a useless procedure. Left intact, there is less than a 1% chance a man will ever require a circumcision for medical reasons, while an estimated 2-6% of cut men will have problems directly related to their circumcision. RIC has complications 1 in 500 times. Is it worth it to you? Hemorrhage, severe infection, even death has and does occur. Is it rare? Yes. But to the parents who have lost their sons, it's very real.


"Circumcision is estimated to be a $400 million business in America. The average cost of the procedure ranges from $50 to $350, with $115 being the average. The usual insurance reimbursement to doctors is around $95. Dr. Van Howe claims that a busy doctor can generate $25,000 a year from circumcisions alone."

As usual, money and not the patient's best interest, is what takes precedence. (above taken from the NOHARMM site, link provided below)

It is done with no pain relief. "So what, they won't remember" you might say. Does that make it ok? You could burn your child with a cattle prod every day for the first year of their life, and they wouldn't remember. Does that make it ok? Of course not. Infants experience pain in a very real way. When they are strapped down in the circumstraint, their limbs are pulled away from the body and strapped down. Very upsetting for a newborn who has spent the last 9 months curled up and just wants to cuddle mom and nurse. 50% of his penile skin is then removed with clamps, scissors and scalpels. The pain relief? A pacifier coated in sugar water. Between 64% and 96% of infants don't receive any pain relief. So, just give them drugs. Not really a preferable option. Anesthesia comes with a lot of risks for a full grown adult, imagine how bad it is for a 12 hour old baby.

Many men argue that they want their sons to look like them, hence circumcision. To this I ask, how many men see their father's penis up close and personal? If a child noticed his father's penis looked different at a young age, it could simply be explained that the father's looks different because he is an adult. When the son gets old enough, they can discuss why the son is intact and the father is not. Given the facts, any son would be happy that his father chose to break the cycle. It takes a big man to accept that there is a better alternative to circumcision, and that is leaving the penis exactly as nature intended.

For myself and many intactivists, the main issue is that the foreskin belongs to the child. Genital integrity. Any sons I ever have will have the right to make the decision for themselves, simply because it is not my body to permanently alter. The foreskin is not like an appendix. It serves a purpose. It decreases friction during sex due to the looser skin gliding. It protects the glans of the penis from being rubbed during everyday life and from dirt and debris. An intact male's foreskin is much like an eyelid, if we're doing comparisons.

As far as religion goes, I will briefly touch on that. I personally am not religious, and would never view religious beliefs as an acceptable reason to cut my sons. I will agree that religion is a personal thing. I simply urge anyone considering religion as a reason to circumcise to read the following links.

http://www.catholicsagainstcircumcision.org/
http://www.jewsagainstcircumcision.org/


Here is a circumcision with the actual audio. Would you put your son through this?

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=AwBCElbVkuY&feature=related
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=XmX6RdRNoqk&feature=related

Just a snip? I know I could never live with putting my perfect, healthy son through that.





http://www.mothersagainstcirc.org/

http://www.noharmm.org/separated.htm

http://www.breastfeeding.com/all_about/all_about_breast_cancer.html

Introduction

Who exactly am I? I'm Kayla, a 19 year old who lives in the Twin Cities area in Minnesota. I started this blog to document my journey towards self-improvement and my slow but sure journey towards my dream job...being a midwife! I'll warn you now, my thoughts, beliefs and opinions are different than mainstream America and I have no shame in expressing them. I promise I'll always back them up with facts, or on more personal issues, my own opinions and my own reasoning.

So, for my introductory post :)

What is a midwife?

A midwife is a trained professional who delivers babies and provides well-woman care. Essentially, they are an alternative to an OBGYN, and arguably a far superior alternative. It's laughable that midwives even are considered alternative, because until the past 100 years or so, doctors did not deliver babies regularly, if at all. Midwives have been around as long as people have been around. All sorts of babies were delivered by sisters, mothers, friends...breech, twins, posterior. Of course the death rate was higher. However, that was most certainly not due to the person catching the baby. People didn't wash their hands because they didn't understand infection. There was no technology. Now, I'm as natural as it gets, but even midwives believe in having some life-saving equipment on hand and any midwife worth her weight will know when to use it.

There are essentially two types of midwives here in the US. The first is a Certified Nurse Midwife. They are nurses who completed additional schooling after getting their RN. They generally work in hospitals. Then there are direct entry midwives, which is what I want to be. There are multiple ways to get into it. As of now, my plan is to start my doula training sometime in 2009. I plan on picking up a few of the books on the reading list in January. Living in a metro area, there are several DONA workshops throughout the year. I also hope to attend the Farm's midwifery assistant workshop in early 2010, once I have my debt paid off from school. I'm not sure exactly how my journey will end, but it's just beginning :)