October 23, 2014 – World
The Danish Edition of The Local (an European English-language news network) headline on October 22, 2014 read,
“Denmark to once again look at circumcision ban”
“In a survey of over 1,000 Danes … 74 percent of respondents wanted a full or partial ban on the practice while just ten percent supported giving parents the right to circumcise their sons.”
It adds,
“Like Denmark, Sweden and Norway have also been discussing a ban on male circumcision.”
Jewish parents, and some Christians, have male babies circumcised for religious reasons. Male Muslim boys are also circumcised but a few years later. And others, for health purposes, also have it done.
However, an increasing number of proponents of the circumcision ban, especially in Europe, believe no parent should be allowed an exemption even for religious reasons.
A higher percentage of American male babies are circumcised than in most other countries outside the Middle East. Yet, even in America it is slowly declining according to statistics provided by the US Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) and others.
The anti-circumcision movement has even reached Israel.
The headline of an Israeli newspaper, Haaretz, in its Opinion section on August 30, 2014 asked,
“Is this the generation that rejects circumcision?”
“A debate has come into being quietly here about the place of Brit Milah (the ritual circumcision of Jewish baby boys on the eighth day after birth). The debate is not taking place abroad, not in “anti-Semitic” Germany, but here in the State of Israel.”
See the Haaretz opinion piece (subscription required)
