Circumcision is unique among medical procedures because it's frequently performed by people with no formal medical training — primarily by Jewish leaders called mohels. Missionaries have also been known to carry out the procedure — including, most famously, Tim Tebow, the Denver Broncos quarterback who performed circumcisions during a trip to the Philippines in 2008.
In the gentile world, circumcision grew in popularity during the Victorian era, when supporters claimed it could tame a man's sex drive and stop boys from masturbating. As modern medicine evolved, infant circumcisions were routinely performed in hospitals on newborns.
Courtesy Michael Andron
Michael Andron, a Jewish mohel, has circumcised thousands of babies.
Deirdra Funcheon
Four of Michael Dulin's devices used for foreskin restoration. The one in the foreground was made from the mouthpiece of a tuba.
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But the procedure has always had its opponents. Ancient Greeks and Romans found it barbaric. It never caught on in Latin America and went out of fashion in much of Europe as countries with national health care sought to save money and stopped funding circumcisions after World War II. The practice has been banned in some public hospitals in Australia, and last year, the main medical association in the Netherlands declared it a "painful and harmful ritual" that violates children's rights.
In America, exact numbers are hard to calculate because data is collected only on the number of circumcisions performed on newborns in hospitals, while many more babies have the procedure done in doctors' offices or religious ceremonies. Still, experts generally agree that the total rate peaked in the 1960s and '70s at about 85 percent. According to the National Hospital Discharge Survey, the rate of in-hospital circumcisions was 65 percent in 1980 and dropped to 56.1 in 2006.
In the United States, the anticircumcision movement can be traced to a Florida man named Van Lewis. While in college — he attended Harvard for a year and played the conch shell in the band — he began to find circumcision absurd and cruel. He decided to "spend the rest of [his] life figuring out where this insanity came from." On December 17, 1970, police arrested him for protesting outside of Tallahassee Memorial Hospital. Though he went on to run a seafood business and a clam farm, Lewis' claim to fame was inspiring others to talk about what had previously been a nonissue. He died in 2010, but in a video uploaded to the internet, he chastises the concept of "doctors chopping ends off of babies' penises."
Then in 1979, California nurse Marilyn Milos witnessed her first circumcision and found the procedure inhumane and the baby's cry unnatural and chilling. In 1985, she started NoCirc, the National Organization of Circumcision Information Resource Centers. But it wasn't until the internet age that anticircumcision activists could easily find one another. Other groups sprang up, and an actual movement coalesced.
Foremost, the anticircumcision crowd believes that boys should be able to decide what happens to their bodies — especially in the case of a medically unnecessary amputation. They have likened circumcision to female genital mutilation — the cutting of a girl's genitals to kill her libido or make her "clean" — which is practiced in parts of Africa and the Middle East but condemned by most developed nations.
Circumcision critics charge that most arguments for the procedure are based on flawed logic. The idea that a child should look like his father? Well, who goes around comparing penises with his dad? The notion that the child will be called an "anteater" in the locker room? They liken it to shame that used to be applied to other once-taboo customs like interracial marriage. An online "intactivism shop" — where "only the prices are rounded off" — sells T-shirts and bumper stickers declaring "hooded warrior" and "anteater pride."
Not all intactivists have such a cute sense of humor. Some accuse doctors of having a financial motivation for performing circumcisions. There are websites that "out" celebrities as intact and villainize researchers who have publicly promoted circumcision. Some even go so far as to accuse individuals of circum-fetish — being sexually aroused by circumcision.
Last summer, intactivists in San Francisco scored a win when they collected enough petition signatures to get a measure on the ballot that would ask voters to ban infant circumcision. The victory backfired, however; the ballot measure was stricken by a judge. After a huge outcry — especially by Jews, who found the notion anti-Semitic — the state Legislature came down forcefully, passing a law that prevents local municipalities from attempting to ban circumcision.
The legal smackdown blunted many anticircumcision activists' hope for having the procedure outlawed. But the episode, and the national attention it received, invigorated local movements around the country. Now, activists say, their focus is on education and outreach.
Today, there are numerous national and international anticircumcision groups. In Florida, the Tampa Bay Area Intactivists demonstrated January 15 at All Children's Hospital. This March, for the 19th year, Cocoa Beach resident David Wilson will lead a national gathering at the Capitol in Washington, D.C., with his organization, the Stop Infant Circumcision Society. There is internet chatter about activists traveling to Orlando on February 26 to protest Tebow, who is scheduled to appear at a golf tournament that weekend.
Rebecca Wald, a South Florida mother of two who is also a writer and has a law degree, was profiled in newspapers around the world after she launched a website, beyondthebris.com, that questions the wisdom of circumcision, particularly as it relates to Judaism. "When I found out that I was pregnant with a son," she says, "circumcision was one of the parenting issues that I researched. And the more that I learned about the effects of circumcision, the more I disliked it."
