[ ARC forum 2 ]

Re: When in Rome...

Written by Ralesk at 23 Jun 2004 00:28:57:

As an answer to: When in Rome... written by Danalee at 23 Jun 2004 00:11:43:

>This forum has been very educational. Is it safe to say, then, that while the public health practice for years and years in the U.S. has been to circumcize boys at birth; that this has not been a practice followed in other 'western' countries such as the U.K.?

The U.K. has abandoned the practice around the WW2 I believe, and before that it was mainly a thing of the aristocracy anyway — and definitely not by far as widespread as it was in the U.S. in the seventies and the early eighties. New Zealand abandoned it some couple decades ago, I don’t know when exactly, however. Australia shows some very low rates and has been on a decline for long.
Mainland Europe, Russia and the Far East never seem to have practised it with notable rates in the last couple centuries, probably not much before either. In Europe, only the Muslim and the Jewish do it.

> This is an honest question and not meant to ignite political factions one way or the other. Ignorant or not, I made the assumption this was a pretty much across the board policy. And, if circumcision has not been the policy in the U.K. in the past, why? (again without political overtones, just interested in the facts). Is it now? Thank you for your enlightened response.

It is perhaps better to phrase it this way: why is it a policy to change a [natural] body, to wound it, in a western, civilised country? It is the States that are “unusual”, even though you may be used to it and thus are made to conclude the other way around.

As for why it was the policy among the aristocrats? I have absolutely no idea where it originates from. Perhaps mimicking the even upper ones. Where they got it from? I don’t think anyone knows.

Definitely though, it is more a done-on-a-whim thing than something based on studies, hygiene or anything like that. And the rest of the world, who don’t do it, don’t seem to have died out while all these centuries passed.

Hope my answers are proper.


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