Belindi wrote: ↑April 4th, 2018, 5:05 am
LuckyR wrote: ↑April 4th, 2018, 3:29 am
Oregon, as opposed to where? Are you implying that the great state of Oregon is an outlier? Where do you reside? Is circumcision illegal there? If not, it seems to me like you have a lot of work to do at home before you start commenting about communities with which you are unfamiliar.
As to my moral code, I didn't have any sons so I never had to cross that bridge. On the subject of my profession, it is completely ethical to provide a community accepted service if you are qualified and skilled, which I am.
You are free to be disgusted, as are those who oppose abortion, for example. The most practical way of expressing your disgust is to apply it to your personal life choices and those of your family. I wholeheartedly support you in that.
Lucky , it's precisely that you are so level headed and that it's entirely believable that you are qualified and skilled that I am concerned that you take a neutral stance. I don't regard you personally as a jobsworth and so my guess is that you are professionally neutral about circumcision because you have absorbed this professional rationale of neutrality. Professions have their own moral inertias. Please consider that, as Eduk put it , no child would circumcise himself or herself.
I live in England and am Scottish. I am a qualified nurse and I have never happened to help a surgeon to circumcise anyone. I doubt if any decent surgeon in the NHS would circumcise for reasons of religion or fashion. The medics' moral inertia is welfare and such status as medics have is exercised on behalf of the patient not his parents or his church. I imagine Oregon to be progressive and free , based on end of life choice which the state of Oregon extends to consenting adults, therefore I expected Oregon unlike the UK to support all rights of the child. The UK is backward about male child circumcision. I guess this must be because of 1. public apathy and 2. because in the UK there is a culture of being very polite about individuals' religions.
I surmise that the UK is backward about condemning cruel religious rituals because of religious intolerance in past centuries, and because here there is a real problem of integrating immigrants. Admittedly there's a worse degree of religious abuse than infant circumcision; there have been instances of child torture to rid the child of evil spirits although that
is culpable in the UK.
I have real hopes that the better educated younger generation will eschew elective circumcision of infants.
You may be a rare person who might appreciate the mildly winding road that this subject matter has taken over the decades of my career. First of all, thanks for making me look up the meaning (and history) of "jobsworth", that was entertaining.
At the beginning of my training, I saw circs as just another responsibility that added nothing to my training nor to my compensation, thus I initially tried to (softly) talk parents out of the procedure. I had a success rate of exactly zero. Since the attempt took more time than handing them the form to sign, I switched gears and just got on with it. It is noteworthy that I can report that my attempts at presenting an alternative viewpoint, even in a very gentle manner, did, in fact diminish in some small to moderate degree, the rapport of the doctor/patient relationship.
Later in my current practice, the procedure is still not linked to my compensation and I already know there is no point in trying to talk parents out of it, so I concentrate on giving a high quality analgesia and procedure. As you know circs are commonly performed by lay people whose skill levels vary as well as their understanding of sterile fields. So to my mind: better me than who knows who.
It is a noticeable recent trend that they are becoming less popular. This makes me chuckle a bit since body modification has soared in popularity at the same time. That is, the tongue ring dad will recoil at the idea of his son getting circed, which is certainly perfectly fine and even logical, just humourous.
"As usual... it depends."