Whom We Serve
“Even if a surgery is executed flawlessly, if the surgery were unnecessary, the surgery in and of itself constitutes harm.”
– Tortorella v Castro, California Court of Appeal, 2006
Children at Risk of genital cutting and Those Affected by Cutting (CARTAC) are more susceptible to injustice, rights abuses and legal neglect than others. We therefore choose to prioritize, but not limit, our work on behalf of the following populations:
• Affected individuals wishing to challenge the notion that parents have the right to subject a healthy child to medically unnecessary and permanently irreversible genital surgery, or the fact that those born with a penis do not currently enjoy the same legal protections of their bodily integrity as those born with a vulva.
• 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;
• Parents, especially new mothers, victimized by high pressure circumcision marketing and solicitation techniques used by hospitals, doctors and/or other medical staff.
• Parents and young persons victimized by circumcision resulting from medical fraud;
• Young persons age 18 to 20 seeking accountability from those responsible for the inherent harm of imposing medically unnecessary circumcision on them;
• Those seeking restitution for the cost of medical or mental health services for circumcision-related suffering and/or the cost of foreskin restoration procedures (i.e., creation of state-based Victim Compensation Funds);
• Transgender females subjected to newborn or childhood penile circumcision who are disadvantaged during vaginoplasty by the tissue loss caused by circumcision;
• Intersex persons who may have outwardly appearing male genitalia, yet also have internal female reproductive organs, or non-binary chromosomal differences, but who nonetheless were subjected to newborn penile circumcision;
• Taxpayers who bring legal challenges in those states where medically unnecessary newborn circumcisions are paid for by state Medicaid programs;
• Employees in health care, education and other fields 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;
• 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.