Resources for Attorneys
“Even if a surgery is executed flawlessly, if the surgery were unnecessary,
the surgery in and of itself constitutes harm.”
Tortorella v. Castro, Court of Appeal, Second District, Division 3, California (2006)
“As laudable as the prohibition of a particular type of abuse of girls may be,
it does not logically further the goal of protecting children on a nondiscriminatory basis.”
U.S. District Judge Bernard Friedman, United States v. Nagarwala, prosecution of a Muslim doctor in Michigan
who performed minor nicking on the vulvas of her Muslim child-patients (2018)
“As someone whose life work has been wrapped up with matters of equal liberty and dignity
without regard to sex, gender, gender identification, or sexual orientation,
I believe the expansion of rights isn’t the exclusive province of the federal judiciary.
Litigating issues like this under state constitutions, in state courts, is an option you should explore.”
Harvard Constitutional Law Professor Laurence H. Tribe, in email correspondence with GALDEF founder Tim Hammond regarding
the constitutionality of laws protecting only females from non-therapeutic genital cutting (April 21, 2021)
“The nature of injustice is that we may not always see it in our own times.”
U.S. Supreme Court Justice Anthony Kennedy (Obergefell v Hodges, 2015)
Medical and ethical controversies surrounding newborn male circumcision have existed since it was first introduced in America in the late 1800s. In the early 1980s cogent legal and human rights questions began to appear in respected academic journals and the popular press. This page highlights books, published articles, videos and other resources that attorneys may find informative and useful in their efforts to create impact litigation. Under each tab of this section you will find resources dealing with law, medicine, ethics, human rights, harm documentation and other related topics with regard to the following issues:
CONSENT: Parents who were given no information, insufficient information or misleading information prior to granting consent to circumcision, including vulnerable immigrant parents with little or no English language comprehension.
FALSE CLAIMS: Parents, especially new mothers, victimized by high pressure circumcision marketing and solicitation techniques used by hospitals, doctors and/or other medical staff.
FRAUD: Parents and young men victimized by circumcision resulting from medical fraud.
MEDICAID: Taxpayers who bring legal challenges in those states where medically unnecessary newborn circumcisions are paid for by state Medicaid programs.
REDRESS: Young men age 18 to 20 seeking accountability from those responsible for the inherent harm of non-therapeutic circumcision, as well as parents seeking accountability by medical personnel who forcibly retract their sons’ foreskins, thereby injuring them and claiming circumcision as a ‘medical necessity’.
RESTITUTION: Those seeking restitution for the cost of medical or mental health services for circumcision- related suffering and/or the cost of foreskin restoration procedures; and the establishment of state-based Victim Compensation Funds.
TRANSGENDER: Transgender persons disadvantaged during gender-affirming health care due to a penile circumcision imposed on them in childhood.
WHISTLEBLOWERS: Whistleblowers who disclose systemic fraudulent diagnoses made by physicians and hospitals who bill health insurers for non-existent problems and circumcisions easily avoided by less radical, non-surgical alternatives.
WRONGFUL TERMINATION: Employees in health care, education and other fields who were victimized by workplace bias, discrimination or termination as a result of expressing opposition to non-therapeutic genital cutting of children or support for children’s genital autonomy.
A: Adverse (Harm) Outcomes
C: Culture/Religion
E: Ethics
G: Gender/Equality
H: History
L: Law/Constitutional
M: Medicine
P: Politics
R: Human Rights
Publications 2024:
A/C/E/G/M/P/R What counts as mutilation—and who should decide? Disrupting received wisdom on genital cutting and modification in the Global North and South. Earp BD, Abdulcadir J and Shahvisi A. Culture, Health and Sexuality. 2024.
“The papers reveal that culturally prescribed genital cutting varies widely in methods, meanings, motivations, and outcomes, with simplistic distinctions based on sex, gender, or cultural origin being highly misleading. The collection emphasizes the need for a more holistic, cross-cultural approach to studying and understanding these practices. Key themes include:
1. The interconnectedness of female, male and intersex genital cutting in many cultures.
2. The role of power dynamics and cultural imperialism in shaping perceptions and policies.
3. The medicalization of genital cutting practices in various contexts.
4. Unintended impacts of selective criminalization of female genital cutting.
5. The influence of hegemonic masculinity and heteronormativity on male genital cutting rituals.
6. The complex relationships between consent, coercion, and cultural pressure.”
C/E/L The smallest cut: The ethics and (surprising) implications of Hatafat Dam Brit for the ongoing genital cutting debate. Buckler M. Kennedy Institute of Ethics Journal. 2024.
“Recent scholarship on the ethical and legal status of “de minimis” or “symbolic” involuntary genital cutting practices features disagreement over what, if anything, grounds their wrongfulness given that they are (relatively) physically superficial. …I argue that debates about involuntary genital cutting of minors should focus on the ethics of these practices considered as (sexually) embodied interpersonal interactions, rather than as body modifications.”
E/L/R Which Children Have Rights? The Child’s Right to Bodily Integrity and Protection Gaps for Children with Intersex Traits under International and National Laws. DeLaet DL, Earp BD, Mills E. Amicus Curiae. 2024;Series 2;5(3):448–473.
“We review relevant global norms, international human rights treaties and legislative developments in a range of countries to illustrate potential pathways for closing legal gaps in the protection of all children’s rights to bodily integrity and (future) bodily and sexual autonomy.”
A/C/E/M Erasing Foreskin:The “Excess Skin” Myth, Male Genital Mutilation, and Foreskin Trafficking in the United States. Welch S. Journal of Bodies, Sexualities, and Masculinities Online First (January 2024): 1–24.
“Highlighting how a cultural attitude treats a healthy body part as worthy only of excision, I show how this vilification rationalizes the wide-scale performance of a practice that in any other context is seen as grossly unethical: the painful and unnecessary modification of the sexual anatomy of a non-consenting person. I also discuss how this rationalization enables profit-driven trafficking in infant sexual tissue.”
C/G/E/M Genital Modifications in Prepubescent Minors: When May Clinicians Ethically Proceed? Brussels Collaboration on Bodily Integrity. American Journal of Bioethics. 2024.
“[A]s a matter of justice, inclusivity, and gender equality in medical-ethical policy …clinicians should not be permitted to perform any nonvoluntary genital cutting or surgery in prepubescent minors, irrespective of the latter’s sex traits or gender assignment. …[T]he hard-won protections that have been put in place for girls with anatomically normative genitalia, and now increasingly for children with certain intersex traits, will not be secure against objections and countervailing pressures as long as nonvoluntary clitoral reduction surgeries …“cosmetic” hypospadias surgeries, medically unnecessary removal of internal gonads, and nontherapeutic, nonreligious penile circumcision of newborns continue in healthcare settings unrestricted.”
Publications 2023:
E/M Male Circumcision and HIV prevention in Southern Africa: Questioning WHO recommendations. Garenne M, Stiegler N, and Bouchard J-P. La Revue de l’Infirmière. 2023;72(288):34–36. doi: 10.1016/j.revinf.2023.01.030 [Translated from the original French]
“These surveys show that HIV prevalence among men aged 40-59 is the same regardless of circumcision status(circumcised vs intact) and type of circumcision (medical vs traditional). These results challenge WHO’s recommendations.”
A/C/M/R Foreskin restorers: insights into motivations, successes, challenges, and experiences with medical and mental health professionals – An abridged summary of key findings. Hammond T, Sardi LM, Jellison WA, McAllister R, Snyder B, Fahmy MAB. International Journal of Impotence Research. 2023;35(3):pp 1-14. doi.org/10.1038/s41443-023-00686-5 [Unabridged Supplement also available from our website]
“We report results from 1790 fully completed surveys. Adverse physical, sexual, emotional/psychological and self-esteem impacts attributed to circumcision had motivated participants to seek foreskin restoration. Most sought no professional help due to hopelessness, fear, or mistrust. Those who sought help encountered trivialization, dismissal, or ridicule. Most participants recommended restoration. Many professionals are unprepared to assist this population. Circumcision sufferers/foreskin restorers have largely been ill-served by medical and mental health professionals.”
A/C/M/R Comment: Foreskin restorers: insights into motivations, successes, challenges and experiences with medical and mental health professionals. Mokken SE, Özer M, and Timmermans FW. International Journal of Impotence Research. 2023;35:323. https://doi.org/10.1038/s41443-023-00693-6
“The results of the study are quite profound and identify a population that largely refrains from seeking professional help in up to 87% of the participants. …A reported 8% started before the age of 18 and 34% between the ages 20–29. The experienced burden, sexual impairment, and affected self-image might therefore impact the rest of their lives greatly and disproportionately.”
C/E/G/M/R ‘Male circumcision’ and ‘female genital mutilation’: why parents choose the procedures and the case for gender bias in medical nomenclature. Nuzzo, JL. International Journal of Human Rights. 2023:1-24 https://doi.org/10.1080/13642987.2023.2199202
“Because both procedures involve significant alteration of genitalia, and social/culture reasons are prominent in parents’ decisions for both, the results suggest a gender bias in medical ethics applied to bodily integrity, which manifests itself in nomenclature that expresses negative value judgement toward the female procedure (‘mutilation’) but not the male procedure (‘circumcision’). The results add to emerging evidence of a ‘male empathy gap’ in public health.”
G/M/R Defending an inclusive right to genital and bodily integrity for children. Townsend, Kate Goldie. International Journal of Impotence Research. 2023;35(1):27-30. doi: 10.1038/s41443-021-00503-x. Epub 2021 Dec 2.
“Given the core political values of Western liberal democracies, including a commitment to human rights, this piece …argues that individual rights to bodily – and especially genital – integrity should take priority over group rights if they come into conflict.”
G/P/R Medicalised genital cutting in the Global North may impede abandonment efforts in the South. Earp, Brian D. BMJ. 2023;380:p302.
“Selective opposition to FGC “absurdly prevents women from accessing quality health services and then blames them for risking their lives …during circumcision, both males and females run the same immediate surgical risks of uncontrolled bleeding, shock and sepsis yet males are privileged to have these risks mitigated but females are not.”
M Circumcision and HIV Prevention in Southern Africa: WHO Recommendations Questioned. Garenne M, Stiegler N, Bouchard J-P. La revue de l’infirmière. 2023;72(288):34–36. https://ferdi.fr/en/publications/circumcision-and-hiv-prevention-in-southern-africa-who-recommendations-questioned.
“This paper summarizes the results of large population-based surveys conducted in southern African countries, the region most affected by AIDS worldwide. These surveys show that HIV prevalence among men aged 40-59 years is the same regardless of circumcision status and type. These results call into question the recommendations of the World Health Organization.”
A/M Immunohistological study of the density and distribution of human penile neural tissue: gradient hypothesis. Cepeda-Emiliani A, Gándara-Cortés M, Otero-Alén M, García H, Suárez-Quintanilla J, García-Caballero T, Gallego R and García-Caballero L. International Journal of Impotence Research. 2023;35:286–305. https://doi.org/10.1038/s41443-022-00561-9.
“The penile prepuce has a highly organized, dense, afferent innervation pattern that is manifest early in fetal development…These orthogonal nerve arrays might …have some explanatory value regarding post-circumcision negative penile sensory alterations reported by some men.” [Afferent
neurons, typically associated with specialized sensory receptors, are nerve fibers responsible for bringing sensory information from the outside world into the brain.]
E/L/M/R From Intimate Exams to Ritual Nicking: Interpreting Nonconsensual Medicalized Genital Procedures as Sexual Boundary Violations. Buckler M, Bruce L, Earp BD. Current Sexual Health Reports. 2023;15:291–300.
“An emerging consensus among scholars of obstetric violence and of children’s rights is that it is unethical for clinicians to perform any medically unnecessary genital procedures, from physical examination to cutting or surgery, without the explicit consent of the affected person. “Presumed” consent, “implied” consent, and “proxy” consent are thus argued to be insufficient.”
E/L/M The Paradox of Medical Necessity. Godwin S and Earp BD. Clinical Ethics. 2023;18(3) 281–284.
“The concept of medical necessity is often used to explain or justify certain decisions—for example, which treatments should be allowed under certain conditions—as though it had an obvious, agreed-upon meaning as well as an inherent normative force….[W]e argue that the term, as used in various discourses, generally lacks a definition that is clear, non-circular, conceptually plausible, and fit for purpose. We propose that future work on this concept should address three main questions: what medical necessity is (i.e., what makes something medically necessary, as opposed to something else); what the concept does (what ‘work’ is it doing when invoked in different settings); and what should follow, normatively, from the fact that something is indeed medically necessary (on some plausible conception).”
C/E/L/M/R Child genital cutting and surgery across cultures, sex, and gender. Part 2: assessing consent and medical necessity in “endosex” modifications. Earp BD, Abdulcadir J, Liao L-M. IJIR: Your Sexual Medicine Journal. 2023;35:173–178.
“[M]edical benefits” or “medical reasons” should not be used to distinguish permissible from impermissible forms of non-consensual genital modification (as in the current WHO approach), but rather, the stricter standard of medical necessity.”
E/M Children’s Sexual Development and Privacy: A Call for Evidence-Based Ethical Policy. Fish M, McCartney MM, Earp BD. Clinical Pediatrics. 2023:1–4. doi:10.1177/00099228231180998
“…the AAP does not regard infant penile circumcision as medically necessary…Nevertheless, whether it is appropriate for parents to request the procedure, or for physicians to alter a child’s sexual anatomy without a valid medical indication, is increasingly debated among bioethicists. Compounding the debate, routine, medicalized penile circumcision of neonates is rare in most countries with similar economic profiles and health care systems to the United States.”
Publications 2022:
E/M Age-incidence and prevalence of HIV among intact and circumcised men: an analysis of PHIA surveys in Southern Africa. Garenne M. Journal of Biosocial Science. 2023;55(6):1156–1168. doi:10.1017/S0021932022000414. Epub 2022 Oct 26
“Results matched earlier observations made in South Africa that circumcised and intact men had similar levels of HIV infection. The study questions the current strategy of large scale VMMC campaigns to control the HIV epidemic. These campaigns also raise a number of ethical issues.”
A/M A comprehensive comparison of the early and late complications of surgical circumcision in neonates and children: A cohort study. Siroosbakht S, Razahhaniha B. Health Science Reports. 2022;5:e939.
“The risk of complications is higher in neonates than children.“
A/M Neonatal Infant Pain Scale in assessing pain and pain relief for newborn male circumcision. Bellieni CV. International Journal of Impotence Research. 2022;35(3):282–285.
“None of the analgesic strategies used obtained the absence of pain. Some differences between circumcision techniques can be noticed, but most assessments exceed the score of 3, chosen as the clinically significant pain.“
A/M Potentially under-recognized late-stage physical and psychosexual complications of non-therapeutic neonatal penile circumcision: a qualitative and quantitative analysis of self-reports from an online community forum . Uberoi M, Abdulcadir J, Ohl DA, Santiago JE, Rana GK, and Anderson FWJ. International Journal of Impotence Research. 2022;35(3):1-8.2022.
“We identified three major categories of complications: physical such as pain during erections and lost sensitivity, psychological such as anxiety and violation of autonomy, and sexual such as feeling that the sexual experience was negatively altered or being unable to complete a sexual experience. We also identified a ‘discovery process’ where some men described coming into awareness of their circumcision status. These findings suggest that neonatal circumcision can have significant adverse consequences for adult men. The removal of normal foreskin tissue should be limited to adult men who choose the procedure for cosmetic reasons or when medically indicated.”
G/M/P Genital Cutting as Gender Oppression: Time to Revisit the WHO Paradigm. Earp, Brian D. Frontiers in Human Dynamics. 2022;4:778592. doi: 10.3389/fhumd.2022.778592
“The selective efforts of the WHO to eliminate only non-Western associated FGC exposes the organization to credible accusations of racism and cultural imperialism and paradoxically undermines its own stated goals: namely, securing the long-term interests and equal rights of women and girls in FGC-practicing societies.”
A/M Deficiencies and biases in professional understanding of the effects of childhood male genital cutting: Comments on “Psychological, psychosocial, and psychosexual aspects of penile circumcision” by Marcus C. Tye and Lauren Sardi. Hammond T. International Journal of Impotence Research. 2022; 35:249–251.
“Future policy statements on penile circumcision should not only emphasize the necessity of listening to the voices of the affected and encourage more investigation, but they should also address the need for a unified ethical and human rights stance applicable to all children at risk of non-medically indicated genital cutting, regardless of whether the child’s outward sex characteristics appear to be male, female or intersex.”
A/M Psychological, psychosocial, and psychosexual aspects of penile circumcision. Tye MC, Sardi LM. International Journal of Impotence Research. 2023;35(3):242-248.
“We argue that additional attention should be paid to the potential for long-term effects of the procedure that may not be properly considered when the patient is an infant or child.”
C/G Against legalising female ‘circumcision’ of minors: a reply to ‘The prosecution of Dawoodi Bohra women’ by Richard Shweder. Earp, Brian D. Global Discourse. 2022;12(1):47–76. https://doi.org/10.1332/204378921X16347905414226
“Western law and policy on child genital cutting is currently beset with cultural, religious and sex-based double standards. …I argue that ‘legalising’ childhood FGC so as to bring it into line with current treatment of childhood MGC is not an acceptable solution to these problems. Instead, all medically unnecessary genital cutting of non-consenting persons should be opposed on moral and legal grounds and discouraged by all appropriate means.”
C/E/G/L/M Non-therapeutic Penile Circumcision of Minors: Current Controversies in UK Law and Medical Ethics. Lempert A, Chegwidden J, Steinfeld R, Earp BD. Clinical Ethics. 2022:1-19. DOI: 10.1177/14777509221104703
“…[G]oing forward, both in law and medical ethics, children of all sexes and genders will have to be treated equally with respect to parental decision-making about medically unnecessary genital surgeries.”
C/E/G Reconsidering the role of patriarchy in upholding female genital modifications: analysis of contemporary and pre-industrial societies. Gruenbaum E, Earp BD and Shweder RA. International Journal of Impotence Research. 2023;35:202–211. https://doi.org/10.1038/s41443-022-00581-5
“… almost all societies that practice ritual female genital modification also practice ritual male genital modification, often for comparable reasons on children of similar ages, with the female rites led by women and the male rites led by men. In contrast, then, to the situation for boys in various cultures, girls are not singled out for genital modification on account of their sex or gender; nor do the social meanings of the female rites necessarily reflect a lower status.”
Publications 2021:
E/M The need for a unified ethical stance on child genital cutting. Earp BD, Shahvisi A, Reis-Dennis S, Reis E. Nursing Ethics. 2021:1–12. DOI: 10.1177/0969733020983397
“It is time for Western healthcare organizations…to adopt a more consistent concept of health and a unified ethical stance when it comes to child genital cutting practices.”
M Sensory innervation of the human male prepuce: Meissner’s corpuscles predominate. García-Mesa Y, García-Piqueras J, Cobo R, Martín-Cruces J, Suazo I, García-Suárez O, Feito J, Vega JA. Journal of Anatomy. 2021:00:1–11. DOI: 10.1111/joa.13481
“Our results indicate that human male preputial Meissner’s corpuscles share the immunohistochemical profile of digital Meissner’s corpuscles, which is considered to be necessary for mechanotransduction.”
M Systematic review of complications arising from male circumcision. Iacob SI, Feinn RS, Lauren Sardi L. BJUI Compass. 2021:1–25. DOI: 10.1002/bco2.123
“It is not ethical to push onto a patient or his family a procedure that they are unsure or uninformed about. Other families will have already decided to not circumcise their sons. Their decisions must be respected.”
E/M Male or female genital cutting: why ‘health benefits’ are morally irrelevant. Earp BD. Journal of Medical Ethics. 2021;47(e92):1–10. doi:10.1136/medethics-2020-106782.
“…[C]hildren of all sexes and genders have an equal right to (future) bodily autonomy. This includes the right to decide whether their own ‘private’ anatomy should exposed to surgical risk, much less permanently altered, for reasons they themselves endorse when they are sufficiently mature.”
C/E/G/M Current critiques of the WHO policy on female genital mutilation. Earp BD and Johnsdotter S. International Journal Impotence Research. 2021;33(1):196–209.
“…we highlight recent comparative studies of medically unnecessary genital cutting of all types, including those affecting adult women and teenagers in Western societies, individuals with differences of sex development (DSD), transgender persons, and males. In so doing, we attempt to clarify the grounds for a growing critical consensus that current anti-FGM laws and policies may be ethically incoherent, empirically unsupportable, and legally unsustainable.”
G/R/M/P World Association for Sexual Health (WAS): Declaration on Sexual Pleasure (esp. p2, Item A):
“[We urge] all governments, international intergovernmental and non-governmental organizations, academic institutions, health and education authorities, the media, private sector actors, and society at large … to: Promote sexual pleasure in law and policy as a fundamental part of sexual health and well-being, grounded in the principles of sexual rights as human rights, including self-determination, non-discrimination, privacy, bodily integrity, and equality” https://worldsexualhealth.net/resources/declaration-on-sexual-pleasure/
See also World Association for Sexual Health (WAS): Declaration on Sexual Rights (2014, esp. p2, Item 3).
“Everyone has the right to control and decide freely on matters related to their sexuality and their body. This includes the choice of sexual behaviors, practices, partners and relationships with due regard to the rights of others. Free and informed decision making requires free and informed consent prior to any sexually-related testing, interventions, therapies, surgeries, or research.” https://worldsexualhealth.net/wp-content/uploads/2021/09/declaration_of_sexual_rights_sep03_2014_b.pdf
Publications 2020:
C/E/G/M Why was the U.S. ban on female genital mutilation ruled unconstitutional, and what does this have to do with male circumcision? Earp BD. Ethics, Medicine & Public Health. 2020;15(100533):1–13. https://doi.org/10.1016/j.jemep.2020.100533
“…feminist scholars and advocates of children’s rights now increasingly argue that efforts to protect girls from non-consensual FGC must be rooted in a sex and gender-neutral (that is, human) right to bodily integrity, if these efforts are to be successful in the long-run.”
C/E/M Is Circumcision a Fraud? Adler PW, Van Howe RS, Wisdom T and Daase F. Cornell Journal of Law and Public Policy. 2020;30:45–107.
“…physicians are not allowed to take orders from parents to perform unnecessary genital surgery on children. …we conclude that MGC exposes physicians, hospitals, and the AAP to large and possibly uninsured liability.”
A/M Neonatal male circumcision is associated with altered adult socio-affective processing. Miani A, Di Bernardo GA, Højgaard AD, Earp BD, et al. Heliyon. 2020;6(11):e05566. https://doi.org/10.1016/j.heliyon.2020.e05566.
“Consistent with longitudinal studies on infant attachment, early circumcision might have an impact on adult socio-affective traits or behavior.”
Publications 2019:
A/M A longitudinal population analysis of cumulative risks of circumcision. Hung YC, Chang DC, Westfal ML, et al. Journal of Surgical Research. 2019;233:111-117.
“Circumcision has a complication rate higher than previously recognized. Most patients with late complications after circumcision received an operative circumcision revision.”
M Normal and Abnormal Prepuce. Mohamed A Baky Fahmy, MD, FRCS. Springer Nature, Switzerland. 2020. 312 pages. ISBN 978-3-030-37620-8. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-030-37621-5
– and –
M Complications in Male Circumcision. Mohamed A Baky Fahmy, MD, FRCS. Elsevier Publishing, St. Louis. 2019. 193 pages. ISBN: 978-0-323-68127-8.
These recently published medical textbooks – written by the Professor of Pediatric Surgery at Al Azher University (Cairo, Egypt) and richly endowed with high quality color photographs – provide an invaluable supplement to existing U.S. medical textbooks that merely describe the foreskin as a “flap of skin” and fail to adequately teach medical students about the extensive array of immediate, short and long-term consequences of male circumcision. They are indispensable additions to the libraries of every attorney wishing to achieve a complete understanding of the penile prepuce and the complications of male circumcision.
A/M Frequency and Variability of Advice Given to Parents on Care of the Uncircumcised Penis by Pediatric Residents: A Need to Improve Education. Malhotra NR, Rosoklija I, Shannon R, D’Oro A, and Liu DB. Urology. 2019;136:218−224. https://doi.org/10.1016/j.urology.2019.09.057
“…pediatric residents currently lack confidence in providing parents advice on preputial care and are unlikely to offer such advice. When offered, the advice given is highly variable.”
C/E/R The child’s right to bodily integrity. Earp BD. In D. Edmonds (Ed.). Ethics and the Contemporary World (pp. 217-235) Abingdon and New York: Routledge. Author’s copy available: https://www.researchgate.net/publication/326671234_The_child’s_right_to_bodily_integrity
“An autonomous person is wronged by an infringement of their BI if they did not consent to it. If a person is incapable of consenting because they are temporarily non-autonomous – as in the case of an intoxicated adult or a pre-autonomous child – the infringement should be delayed until the individual becomes autonomous and can make their own decision.”
C/R The child’s right to genital integrity. Townsend KG. Philosophy and Social Criticism. 2019:1–21. DOI: 10.1177/0191453719854212
“I make a case for the child’s inviolable right to genital integrity, based on the relationship between the child’s genital integrity and their sexual and genital autonomy in adulthood. I outline and respond to potential criticisms, namely that (i) male genital cutting has medical benefits that outweigh its harms and that (ii) female genital cutting is more socially harmful than male genital cutting.”
E/R Medically Unnecessary Genital Cutting and the Rights of the Child: Moving Toward Consensus. Brussels Collaboration on Bodily Integrity. American Journal of Bioethics. 2019;10:17–28, DOI: 10.1080/15265161.2019.1643945
“We are (91) physicians, ethicists, nurse-midwives, public health professionals, legal scholars, political scientists, anthropologists, psychologists, sociologists, philosophers, and feminists from Africa, Asia, Australasia, Europe, the Middle East, and the Americas with interdisciplinary expertise in child genital cutting practices across a wide range of cultural contexts. … Together, we argue for a more coherent, sex- and gender-inclusive approach that recognizes (1) the special vulnerability of young people—regardless of the ethnicity, religion, or immigration status of their parents—to medically unnecessary genital cutting and (2) the moral importance of bodily integrity, respect for bodily/sexual boundaries, and consent.”
E/L Is Circumcision Unethical and Unlawful? A Response to Morris et al. Svoboda JS, Adler PW, Van Howe RS. Journal of Medicine, Law & Ethics. 2019;7(1):75–95. DOI 10.7590/221354019X15538518338616
“In 2016, we argued that non-therapeutic male circumcision before the age of consent is unethical and unlawful. In a response article published in 2018, Morris and colleagues sought to undermine our claims, raising a number of arguments that, we will demonstrate in the present essay, lack both logical and empirical support.”
C/E/R Mutilation or Enhancement: What is morally at stake in body alterations? Earp BD. Practical Ethics. 2019. http://blog.practicalethics.ox.ac.uk/2019/12/mutilation-or-enhancement-what-is-morally-at-stake-in-body-alterations
“…the sheer alteration of healthy genital tissue is not inherently mutilating (as in a net harm, or net negative). Rather, a person could interpret altered genitalia in a wide range of ways, including as improved or enhanced; and this is in fact the majority way that persons with altered genitalia do regard their own bodies, as far as I can tell from reading the primary and secondary literatures on this topic. What makes medically unnecessary genital cutting morally wrong is its being done non-consensually. It does not matter if it is mutilating or not – that is up to the person who is affected to decide – what matters is that it should be that person’s own choice, when they are competent to make such a decision.”
E/L The law and ethics of female genital cutting. Shahvisi A and Earp BD. In S. Creighton & L-M Liao (Eds.) Female Genital Cosmetic Surgery: Solution to What Problem? (pp. 58–71). Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.
“…all nontherapeutic genital alterations to female minors are criminalised, typically with harsh penalties for transgressing the law, while even more invasive nontherapeutic genital alterations to male and intersex minors are permitted and almost entirely unregulated”
Publications 2018:
A/C False beliefs predict increased circumcision satisfaction in a sample of US American men. Earp BD, Sardi LM and Jellison A. Culture, Health and Sexuality. 2018;20(8):945–959.
“…[T]he lack-of-harm reported by many circumcised men, like the lack-of-harm reported by their female counterparts in societies that practice FGC, may be related to holding inaccurate beliefs concerning unaltered genitalia and the consequences of childhood genital modification.”
E/M Circumcision of male infants and children as a public health measure in developed countries: A critical assessment of recent evidence. Frisch M and Earp BD. Global Public Health. 2018;13(5):626–641. http://dx.doi.org/10.1080/17441692.2016.1184292 (Originally published online: 19 May 2016)
“In December of 2014, an anonymous working group under the United States’ Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) issued a draft of the first-ever federal recommendations regarding male circumcision. …Although we set aside the burgeoning bioethical debate surrounding the moral permissibility of performing non-therapeutic circumcisions on healthy minors, we argue that, from a scientific and medical perspective, current evidence suggests that such circumcision is not an appropriate public health measure for developed countries such as the United States.”