EP43: Male Circumcision: Religious Freedom or Child Abuse?

With Iceland weighing a ban on male infant circumcision, the usual outcry from Jews and Muslims about "religious freedom," and prominent Muslim activists like Maajid Nawaz now openly speaking against the age-old procedure, circumcision is back in the news in a big way. In this episode, we speak to Brian D Earp, Associate Director of the Yale-Hastings Program in Ethics and Health Policy at Yale University and a Research Fellow at the Centre for Practical Ethics at the University of Oxford. He holds degrees from Yale, Oxford, and Cambridge, is the prolific author of dozens of research publications, and is a leading academic authority on infant genital cutting. In this fascinating conversation, we cover all of the usual arguments given for circumcising healthy newborns—from religious and cultural reasons to those supposed "health benefits." We talk about FGM, how it compares to male circumcision procedurally, anatomically, politically, and socio-culturally. And importantly, we talk about the ethics of cutting babies: is it ever justified? If you have an opinion about male circumcision, you'll find it addressed here. Check it out.

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The American Academy of Pediatrics greenlights FGM in 2010: http://www.nytimes.com/2010/05/07/health/policy/07cuts.html

Brian at Yale: http://biomedicalethics.yale.edu/people/290451.profile

Brian at Oxford: https://www.practicalethics.ox.ac.uk/people/mr-brian-earp

Brian's publications at academia.edu: https://oxford.academia.edu/BrianDEarp

Brian on Twitter: @briandavidearp

Iceland's proposed circumcision ban: https://www.nytimes.com/2018/02/28/world/europe/circumcision-ban-iceland.html

"Male Circumcision and the HIV/AIDS Myth": https://www.huffingtonpost.com/ali-a-rizvi/male-circumcision-and-the_b_249728.html

Ali A. Rizvi on universal circumcision: https://goodmenproject.com/featured-content/universal-circumcision-dumbest-proposal-ever/