31/01/2023
Some gay and bisexual men are active in the anti-circumcision movement, regarding cultural and religious circumcision as an affront to bodily autonomy and a crime against male children similar to female genital mutilation (FGM). They were given a boost this week as the National Secular Society, which campaigns against undue religious influence in public life, published the results of a Freedom of Information Request which revealed many cases of concern where babies and young boys were maimed as a result of ritual circumcision. The Secular Society takes up the story and says “The General Medical Council (GMC), which regulates doctors in the UK, dealt with 39 complaints relating to 30 doctors regarding circumcisions between 2012 and 2022.... In one case a doctor reportedly used "inappropriate restraint techniques", including "using non clinical staff to restrain child patients". The Royal College of Nursing has told the NSS restrictive physical interventions should not be used in non-therapeutic circumstances that are either not an emergency or urgent.” NSS campaigns officer Dr Alejandro Sanchez said: "These complaints lay bare the dangers of medically unnecessary circumcision in babies and children. It is a myth that circumcision is simple and safe. Subjecting a non-consenting child to a painful, dangerous and irreversible procedure to satisfy the religious wishes of parents flies in the face of medical ethics and child rights. These findings are almost certainly the tip of the iceberg. They are only the complaints brought against medically trained professionals. The harms caused by non-medically trained individuals, who under the law can also carry out circumcision, hardly bear thinking about. The medical establishment and the government must now act, as they have done with FGM, to protect boys from medically unnecessary religious and cultural genital cutting."
