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Do You Know: About Forced Foreskin Retraction? – Part 1

by
Blog, Do You Know?
February 1, 2018

Unfortunately, parents who have taken a stand and said NO to the circumcision of their baby boys now have another worry: an iatrogenic* epidemic of Forced Foreskin Retraction (FFR), fueled by the same ignorance and phobias that have perpetrated the uniquely American infant circumcision industry. (I talked about forced foreskin retraction in Intact America’s October-November newsletter.) Preliminary results of a new national survey commissioned by Intact America, and conducted by the reputable polling firm Qualtrics, show that two out of five intact boys under the age of six years has had his foreskin forcibly retracted.

As part of our ongoing work, Intact America has been fighting this epidemic, publishing information about care of the intact penis, and answering personal inquiries from parents whose sons have been victims of over-zealous doctors or nurses. Another intactivist organization, Doctors Opposing Circumcision, has filed numerous official complaints on behalf of parents and their sons to state medical boards.

Now, the battle is escalating. In January 2018, Atlanta attorney David Llewellyn filed an important lawsuit against a major pediatric hospital in that city, describing that organization’s defiance of current pediatric care guidelines, and its nursing staff’s systematic violation of patients’ rights.

Alleging battery; nursing malpractice; intentional infliction of emotional distress; willful, wanton and reckless misconduct; and negligent failure to protect a patient, Park v. Children’s Healthcare of Atlanta details the actions of a nurse at Children’s, who – without conversation or warning – ripped away the foreskin of an intact toddler in order to insert a urinary catheter, causing him severe pain, bleeding and emotional distress. The complaint also describes the defiant attitude taken by other hospital staff, who insisted that the hospital’s protocol calling for nurses and doctors to forcibly retract all intact boys’ foreskins was derived from current established medical recommendations, erroneously claimed that the child’s foreskin put him at risk of disease, and shamed his parents for not having had their son circumcised.

[box] The medical literature, including guidance from the American Academy of Pediatrics, is clear: An intact boy’s foreskin should NEVER be forcibly retracted.[/box]

If your son has been a victim of forced foreskin retraction at the hands of medical professionals, we encourage you to complain in writing to the doctor who performed the retraction and the facility where this took place. At a minimum, you should provide them with factual information, such as this article by Carmack and Milos and this information sheet. You should also file a complaint with your state’s medical board or office of professional discipline. Finally, you may wish to file a lawsuit. Should you choose to do so, Intact America can help you or your attorney with the pertinent resources. Contact us at [email protected] or write to Georganne Chapin directly at [email protected].

* Caused by the medical system. Iatrogenesis refers to any effect on a person, resulting from any activity of one or more persons acting as healthcare professionals or promoting products or services as beneficial to health that does not support a goal of the person affected.

Related Posts

Marilyn

Marilyn Fayre Milos, multiple award winner for her humanitarian work to end routine infant circumcision in the United States and advocating for the rights of infants and children to genital autonomy, has written a warm and compelling memoir of her path to becoming “the founding mother of the intactivist movement.” Needing to support her family as a single mother in the early sixties, Milos taught banjo—having learned to play from Jerry Garcia (later of The Grateful Dead)—and worked as an assistant to comedian and social critic Lenny Bruce, typing out the content of his shows and transcribing court proceedings of his trials for obscenity. After Lenny’s death, she found her voice as an activist as part of the counterculture revolution, living in Haight Ashbury in San Francisco during the 1967 Summer of Love, and honed her organizational skills by creating an alternative education open classroom (still operating) in Marin County. 

After witnessing the pain and trauma of the circumcision of a newborn baby boy when she was a nursing student at Marin College, Milos learned everything she could about why infants were subjected to such brutal surgery. The more she read and discovered, the more convinced she became that circumcision had no medical benefits. As a nurse on the obstetrical unit at Marin General Hospital, she committed to making sure parents understood what circumcision entailed before signing a consent form. Considered an agitator and forced to resign in 1985, she co-founded NOCIRC (National Organization of Circumcision Information Resource Centers) and began organizing international symposia on circumcision, genital autonomy, and human rights. Milos edited and published the proceedings from the above-mentioned symposia and has written numerous articles in her quest to end circumcision and protect children’s bodily integrity. She currently serves on the board of directors of Intact America.

Georganne

Georganne Chapin is a healthcare expert, attorney, social justice advocate, and founding executive director of Intact America, the nation’s most influential organization opposing the U.S. medical industry’s penchant for surgically altering the genitals of male children (“circumcision”). Under her leadership, Intact America has definitively documented tactics used by U.S. doctors and healthcare facilities to pathologize the male foreskin, pressure parents into circumcising their sons, and forcibly retract the foreskins of intact boys, creating potentially lifelong, iatrogenic harm. 

Chapin holds a BA in Anthropology from Barnard College, and a Master’s degree in Sociomedical Sciences from Columbia University. For 25 years, she served as president and chief executive officer of Hudson Health Plan, a nonprofit Medicaid insurer in New York’s Hudson Valley. Mid-career, she enrolled in an evening law program, where she explored the legal and ethical issues underlying routine male circumcision, a subject that had interested her since witnessing the aftermath of the surgery conducted on her younger brother. She received her Juris Doctor degree from Pace University School of Law in 2003, and was subsequently admitted to the New York Bar. As an adjunct professor, she taught Bioethics and Medicaid and Disability Law at Pace, and Bioethics in Dominican College’s doctoral program for advanced practice nurses.

In 2004, Chapin founded the nonprofit Hudson Center for Health Equity and Quality, a company that designs software and provides consulting services designed to reduce administrative complexities, streamline and integrate data collection and reporting, and enhance access to care for those in need. In 2008, she co-founded Intact America.

Chapin has published many articles and op-ed essays, and has been interviewed on local, national and international television, radio and podcasts about ways the U.S. healthcare system prioritizes profits over people’s basic needs. She cites routine (nontherapeutic) infant circumcision as a prime example of a practice that wastes money and harms boys and the men they will become. This Penis Business: A Memoir is her first book.