Quote:
Originally Posted by danielf
Martyh is simply countering the argument (which has been pre-empted a million times in this thread) that if you object to the foreskin being removed without someone's consent, then you should also object to an appendix being removed, which is bolleaux, as there are compelling medical reasons for removing an appendix, and not for removing a foreskin.
I suppose you could then argue that religious reasons can be just as compelling, and ultimately the parents have the right to decide what happens to their children. At that point I would point out that it gets a bit hairy when parents deny their children medical intervention, or when people's religion decides what medical intervention can be legally carried out to save the life of a woman who's about to die in child-birth.
http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/uk-northern-ireland-20321741 |
I am arguing that to a religious person, religious reasons *are* just as compelling and parents *do* have the right to decide what happens to their children. And in so doing, I am also pointing out that that, pretty much, is what amounts to the status quo in this country, because it has been found over many generations to work pretty well.
Regarding the hairiness of medical intervention issues, there is a useful study here:
http://adc.bmj.com/content/90/7/715.full
It focuses on JWs and whether they have the right to deny a blood transfusion on behalf of their children. (They don't). Where a person with religious conviction finds that the law of the land does not support that conviction, then as a I said earlier, they either reinterpret their convictions, take them underground, or emigrate. All of these have occurred at one time or another in history. In the case of Christianity, persecution is what helped to drive its spread out of Roman Palestine in the first place.
---------- Post added at 19:34 ---------- Previous post was at 19:31 ----------
Quote:
Originally Posted by martyh
I couldn't care less if people get circumcised if that's how they express their religious beliefs so be it ,i just feel that infant circumcision should be more tightly regulated ,not for any reason other than we can do it safer and better .We aren't living in the desert anymore we have knowledge and skills that are in themselves god like compared to 3000 yrs ago and i choose to believe that was Gods intention,to give us the ability to develop and progress beyond a primitive society , so lets use this knowledge to the best of our ability and if that means dragging some religious traditions kicking and screaming into the 21st century so be it
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Perhaps we could get Parliament to create a regulator. They could call it Ofsnip.
I must admit, I'm surprised at how little there is in the way of accreditation required in order to be able to carry out a circumcision.