by Leslie M.

Created on: November 07, 2008

Years after Lorena Bobbitt cut off her husbands genitals, the name brings an "ouch" to the lips of almost every man who has heard the story that made headlines back in 1993. Yet the parents of many baby boys elect to "Bobbitt" their precious innocent bundles on a daily basis, hours after birth without anesthesia.

Simply put, circumcision is genital mutilation. By amputating the foreskin of the penis, you're depriving your child of up to 95 percent of the nerves stimulated during sexual activity. To put that in perspective, that's like having most of your tongue slashed off, and sitting down to a gourmet meal expecting to appreciate the nuances. And that's if all goes well with the procedure.

Of course, if you're a caveman who doesn't believe masturbation and sex is an important part of life, consider how you would feel if your little darling came away from the operation with a substandard result. Something that can occur whether you've gone to the mayo clinic, or a backwoods doctor's office in a third world country. Think of the shame and guilt you would have to live with knowing your child had to go through life with a buried, webbed, or botched penis. And these are just few of the horrors that can afflict the most sensitive area of a baby boy's body.

You'll notice that the problems I've mentioned above aren't long Latin names that have to be looked up in some medical dictionary. They're like street names that people have come up with over the years as these are not uncommon complications. "Buried" or "webbed" penis, probably the most frequent problem, is an issue that can occur when the glands of the penis retract under the fat pad of the surrounding skin causing it to look inverted. It looks almost like a belly button or web (hence the name) where the penis should be because of the scarring that can take place when an overzealous circumciser takes off too much of the foreskin.

Fortunately, in most cases a buried penis will fix itself over time as a child grows, or can be surgically corrected, but imagine the catastrophic repercussions if the glands are also taken off with the foreskin. That would describe what happens when not just the foreskin is removed, but the glands as well when the result is "botched". Even if the child was very lucky and was able to have his penis surgically reattached, imagine the repercussions as a child grows and learns what happened to his penis.

All in all, circumcision is a barbaric act. In today's society, where it is even illegal to harm an animal, why do we continue to put our children through this horrific act? Under the best circumstances, removing the foreskin can hurt a person's sex life, and under the worst, the penis can actually be amputated. Why would any parent want to put their child through that?

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