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Georganne Chapin interview on “Sex Out Loud”

Listen to an in-depth discussion about foreskin and circumcision between Intact America’s Georganne Chapin and Sex Out Loud podcast host Tristan Taormino.

“[Georganne Chapin] taught me so much about the foreskin and circumcision that it changed my views permanently, and I have her to thank.”—Tristan Taormino,

Press Release: Having a Baby Boy? Get Ready for the Circumcision Sellers!

Media Contact:
Jeannie Ashford, Harrison Edwards PR
[email protected]
914.242.0010 x 3 (office) or 914.318.1568 (mobile)
 

A Groundbreaking Intact America Survey Finds Doctors, Nurses,
and Midwives Actively Solicit Moms to Have Their Sons Circumcised

 

78% of Mothers Had Their Sons Circumcised if Health Providers Asked,
Compared to Only 45% of Mothers Who Were Not Asked

 

“Doctors Tell Us They Circumcise Boys Only Because Parents Want It. This Survey Proves Otherwise”— Georganne Chapin, Executive Director, Intact America

 

(Tarrytown, New York—November 16, 2020) — A new study released by Intact America reveals that circumcision of baby boys is routinely and often aggressively pushed by physicians, nurses, and midwives, even if parents have not expressed interest in the procedure. Survey results, tabulated by Qualtrics, a widely used survey provider, show that new mothers are solicited eight times on average by health care professionals, “even though no medical society in the world, including the American Academy of Pediatrics, recommends surgically removing the foreskin of healthy baby boys,” said Georganne Chapin, executive director of Intact America, the nation’s largest advocacy organization seeking to end routine circumcision in the United States.

The Intact America 2020 survey is the first time researchers have shown the direct correlation between solicitation and an increased circumcision rate. Survey results indicate that solicitation increased circumcisions by 173%. Only 45% of new mothers circumcised their sons without being asked, compared to 78% of new mothers who had been solicited. New mothers agreed to the procedure after only one or two asks. Even a “soft sell,” such as giving the mother a consent form to perform the procedure, increased circumcisions by 137%.

Tellingly, the survey also found that 21% of mothers who agreed to allow their sons to be circumcised wished they had done more research on the topic, and 10% regretted their choice.

“For years, we’ve heard from parents, especially mothers, about having been pressured or coerced by doctors and nurses to circumcise their sons, but the impact and scope of solicitation has never been measured before,” said Chapin. “The survey shows solicitation directly and dramatically drives up the infant circumcision rate. Soliciting this unnecessary surgery has to end.”

Chapin continued, “Doctors tell us they circumcise boys only because parents want it, but this survey proves otherwise. Both doctors and nurses (including nurse midwives) give mothers the impression that circumcision is, if not necessary, ‘normal’ or desirable, so parents agree to permanently alter their sons’ genitals. But they don’t tell parents the whole story: that circumcision is painful, reduces sexual sensitivity for the man the baby will become, and can lead to lifelong trauma.”

About the Survey
Intact America worked with Qualtrics to send the circumcision solicitation survey to a national, random sample of 2,519 mothers who had given birth to a boy in the past four years. The survey defined “solicitation” as every time a physician, midwife, or nurse either verbally asked the mother if she wanted to circumcise her son; recommended she circumcise her son; told her that circumcision was required; handed her a circumcision consent form; or assumed (as perceived by the mother) that she wanted to circumcise her son.

Survey results (with a 3% margin of error) revealed numerous noteworthy facts:

  • 94% of mothers were solicited to have their baby boys circumcised.
  • 78% of mothers who were solicited agreed to have their sons circumcised.
  • 45% of mothers who had not been solicited allowed their sons to be circumcised.
  • “Soft sells,” such as being handed a consent form, increased circumcisions by 137%.
  • The average number of solicitations was 8.
  • Solicitation, in all forms, increased circumcisions by 173%.
  • 71% of mothers said they would have asked about circumcision without prompting.
  • 18% of mothers said they would not have thought to ask about circumcision.
  • 21% of mothers who agreed to having their sons circumcised said that they wish they had done more research.
  • 10% of mothers regretted their choice.
  • Physicians were responsible for 3 out of 5 solicitations; nurses and midwives were responsible for the remainder.

Why This Matters
Each year, an estimated 1.5 million baby boys are circumcised in American medical settings. Intact America estimates that if circumcision solicitations were to cease, 600,000 boys—and the men they will become—would be spared every year from the trauma and lifelong consequences of the procedure.

Chapin, an attorney with broad knowledge of health law and bioethics, believes that medical solicitation of infant male circumcision breaches several well-established ethical boundaries (see link) and the goal of health care equity.

Chapin said that Intact America will use the survey’s findings to mount a major campaign to halt the solicitation of circumcision by U.S. medical professionals, end public and private insurance payments for the procedure, and create an intact-informed society that is foreskin-positive and educated about the male genitalia.

“Instead of handing out consent forms, medical professionals should distribute educational materials on how to care for a baby’s intact penis,” Chapin said. “It’s so easy. Leave it alone and wash his penis like you do his fingers. His foreskin will retract in its own good time, by late puberty, if not before.”

The public is invited to begin its research into circumcision by visiting CircumcisionDebate.org, a companion site of IntactAmerica.org.

About Intact America
Intact America is the largest national advocacy group working to end involuntary child genital cutting in America and to ensure healthy sexual futures for all people. It does this by challenging social and sexual norms and empowering supporters and volunteers through advocacy and education. To learn more about the issues involved in the current conversation about newborn male circumcision, visit IntactAmerica.org and CircumcisionDebate.org, and follow us on Facebook, Twitter, and Instagram.

Voices — Lawn Griffiths

Lawn Griffiths
I crossed the threshold of awareness that I had been circumcised when I was about 12. Running naked on the farm driveway was a second cousin, who was about 6. His penis was remarkably pointed and tubelike, yet somehow covered. I learned he and his brothers were not circumcised. I largely just left it at that until I was in graduate school at Northwestern University in Evanston, Ill., in 1971 when I came across the Gore Vidal novel, “Myra Breckinridge.”

When I got to chapter 22, I was convicted by words spread across a mere two pages. Myra started out, “Just as I expected, seventy-two per cent of the male students are circumcised. At Clem’s party, I had been reminded of the promiscuous way in which American doctors circumcise males in childhood, a practice I highly disapproved of, agreeing with that publisher who is forever advertising in the New York Times Book Review, a work which proves that circumcision in necessary for only a very few men. For the rest, it constitutes in the advertiser’s phrase, ‘a rape of the penis.’” Myra later states, “Today only the poor Boston Irish, the Midwestern Poles and Appalachian Southerners can be counted upon to be complete.”

There was that word – complete. I was not complete. My penis had been raped. What would I have looked like whole? What would it have felt like? So began years of personal research, saving articles and assuring myself that should I have a son or grandson, they would remain whole.

Years later, while cleaning my parents’ vacant house, I found the Des Moines hospital-issued receipt for my mother’s stay. The entire bill for her hospitalization in 1946 was $83. “Other charges: Twin baby boys – $10.” My foreskin was zipped off for a mere $5! What a rip-off!

So when our son was born in 1975, I made it clear again and again to hospital staff that our son was NOT to be circumcised. We had the same success when both of our children had sons. Our grandsons were spared. And a nephew and his wife took the same route with their two sons. Friends have credited me for the information they needed to keep new sons intact.

I had a 40-year daily newspaper career as a reporter, editor and columnist. In 1987, I interviewed a nurse from the group, “Nurses for the Rights of the Child,” based in Santa Fe, N.M. I wrote an article for my daily paper, but a senior editor “spiked” it (killed it from publication), claiming circumcision was a non-issue and such an article was inappropriate.

A few years later, when I was religion editor, I wrote a column that pointed out that Congress had outlawed female genital mutilation, and asked why the hypocrisy and a double standard? Why was it legal for males’ genitals to be cut, but illegal when done to females? I also wrote an editorial page column regarding Arizona health officials ending Medicare coverage for circumcisions, determining it was not essential medical care. The state became the seventh state in 2002 to do so.

With the arrival of social media, I wrote numerous commentaries and blog posts, and have fired off countless letters to hospitals and doctors. I have given formal talks. I own 40 books on circumcision and have many file drawers filled with materials. I wrote and published a novel in which circumcision is a key topic. In 1998, I joined a Phoenix-area NOCIRC/NORM group, whose men meet on alternate months to discuss circumcision issues and support each other in foreskin restoration. Both my twin and I have completed restoration, but we know we can never recover the specialized tissue long removed. For years, we have tabled at the annual Martin Luther King Jr. Civil Rights Day at a Phoenix park where we engage the public about circumcision issues. I have taken part in demonstrations and often carry a sign that says, “Informed Parents Reject Circumcision.”

I have come to know many of the giants in the intactivist movement through writings and attending the International Symposia on Genital Integrity and Children’s Rights – those held in Seattle, Boulder and San Francisco. Intact America, co-sponsor of those gatherings, has given such new energy, resources and force to the cause, under the keen professional leadership of Georganne Chapin. At the 13th Symposium in Boulder in 2014, Marilyn Milos recognized me as one of about 35 “pioneers” of the Intactivist movement, and each of us got to address the conference briefly.

I have an Arizona personalized license plate (NOCIRCM) displayed on the child abuse prevention plate series carrying the words, “It shouldn’t hurt to be a child.” My truck carries six provocative bumper stickers, including one that reads, “Forced Circumcision is Sexual Assault.” When I look in my rear-view mirror, I am heartened by the fingers pointed to those messages. Drivers and passengers behind me then launch into conversations and often take cellphone pictures. It hopefully plants seeds in their minds that forced circumcision is wrong.

Lawn Griffiths

Interested in lending your voice? Send us an email, giving us a brief summary of what you would like to write about, and we will get back to you.

Pride 2020

Join Our Intactivist Pride Virtual Event!

Virtual pride event hosted by Intact America
Pride 2020 events have been cancelled around the country, but Intact America is making it easy for you to come out as a Proud Intactivist from the safety of your home. Here’s how:

Download and print your “PROUD INTACTIVIST” button (below). Cut it out and fill in your name. Then – after dressing in your best Pride regalia (or boring everyday outfit) – hold that sign up, smile, shoot a selfie, and send it to us at [email protected].

We’ll assemble the photos into an awesome online Pride celebration later in the Summer.

Remember, nobody ever changed the world by staying anonymous!

Virtual Intactivist Pride Event Button 2020

Click on the image to download the button PDF to print.

 

How COVID-19 Can Help Break the Circumcision Cycle

The United States is now the epicenter of the global coronavirus pandemic, and our medical resources are stretched thin. There is a shortage of health care professionals to care for the thousands of terribly ill COVID-19 patients who have flooded our hospitals, which is why the U.S. Surgeon General Jerome Adams asked health care providers to cancel or postpone all adult elective procedures to avoid overwhelming hospital systems. The Surgeon General warned that every elective surgery could spread this deadly virus within a facility. Unfortunately, though not surprisingly, after a few weeks’ realization that the pandemic is going to be with us for a long time, hospitals are resuming elective surgeries, with little discussion about the principles or priorities that underlay the Surgeon General’s recommendations.

That said, his guidance did not go far enough. In particular, it failed to address the fact that many elective procedures for minors could and should also be evaluated as to their need. A glaring example of a surgery that is not just a non-priority during a pandemic but utterly useless at any time is – ironically – also the most commonly performed pediatric surgery in America. Newborn circumcision treats no illness and could be completely abandoned with only positive benefits for children and for the nation’s health overall. Of course, this procedure is sold by physicians and nurses to parents, who “elect” to cut their baby boy’s genitals, and the patient is given no choice; if he were, I suspect he’d opt to forgo the surgery and remain intact. (One of my favorite bumper stickers of all times says: 10 Out of 10 Babies Say NO to Circumcision!)

Boys who are circumcised spend, on average, an extra six hours in the hospital, increasing the risk that they and their mothers will be exposed to COVID-19 and other infections. It is just appalling to me that doctors and hospitals engage in cutting the genitals of infants, even when the risks associated with the pandemic are so apparent.

Yet, it’s clear from the reports I have seen that doctors and nurses continue to press parents to circumcise their newborn boys, and that it even extends to cases where the mother is COVID-19-positive! In early April, the American Academy of Pediatrics published its “Initial Guidance: Management of Infants Born to Mothers with COVID-19,” which specifically states, “Well newborns should receive all indicated care, including circumcision if requested.”

What the guidance does not say, but should, is that the American Academy of Pediatrics itself has always stated that there is not sufficient scientific evidence to recommend routine newborn circumcision. To that, we add that circumcision is a harmful intervention that no professional medical society recommends, that it is performed on patients who are not sick, and that it robs babies of an essential erogenous part of their natural penis.

Intact America has launched a petition drive to demand that the Surgeon General tell hospitals to stop performing male child circumcisions at this critical time. Nationwide, doctors perform 3,000 newborn circumcisions each day, or more than one million unnecessary surgeries every year. Each day, the procedure consumes 6,000 surgical masks, 6,000 pairs of protective gloves, and other supplies that could be better used to protect frontline health care workers from COVID-19 and to treat sick patients.

We have also contacted nearly 20,000 administrators and clinicians from thousands of hospitals around the country requesting that they stop all newborn circumcisions. Health care professionals need to understand that cutting newborn genitals both wastes precious resources and increases the risk of exposure to COVID-19 by babies and their mothers.

COVID-19 has brought pain and suffering to millions in the United States, and the U.S. health care system will be forever changed by this pandemic. One would hope that both experts and the general public will begin to accept that it’s necessary to prioritize our overall use of medical resources to ensure that supplies, equipment and personnel are available – and equitably accessible – for when they are truly needed. Fortunately, more and more Americans are ready to accept the wisdom that intactivists have advocated for years: suspend routine newborn circumcisions and keep all children whole, as nature intended.

We can use this pandemic as an impetus to stop cutting boys’ genitals—just as we refuse to allow cutting the genitals of girls. We can break the circumcision habit, and thus move closer to a consensus that keeping a boy intact (“uncircumcised”) is the normal and desirable thing to do. In his book, “The Tipping Point,” Malcolm Gladwell, explains the concept: “The tipping point is that magic moment when an idea, trend, or social behavior crosses a threshold, tips, and spreads like wildfire.”

We look forward to watching the flames. Help us by signing our petition today.