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The U.S. Circumcision Crisis: Why Your Support Matters

the u.s. circumcision crisis

Picture this: you’re born with a body part that’s healthy, functioning, and causing no issues. But someone else decides it needs to be removed. 

This is the reality for millions of newborn boys across the United States—circumcised without consent, often without medical necessity, and nearly always under the guise of outdated cultural norms, religious beliefs, or debunked health myths.

Circumcision isn’t just a “snip.” It’s a major human rights issue. Stripped of bodily autonomy, boys are subjected to a practice with long-term physical and psychological consequences

Despite enormous resistance, we continue to challenge the status quo, push for informed consent, and bring the truth about circumcision into the spotlight.

But make no mistake: this fight requires resources. Here’s why your donations to Intact America are more important than ever in this battle for bodily autonomy.

Circumcision in the U.S.: A Hidden Epidemic

In the United States, nearly 60% of newborn boys are circumcised—most without any legitimate medical need. While other countries are beginning to see circumcision as unnecessary, the U.S. remains a stronghold for this procedure, largely due to a mix of cultural traditions, misleading health advice, and poor education. This isn’t just a debate about personal choice—it’s a human rights crisis.

Every circumcision performed without informed consent reinforces the dangerous idea that others have the right to control what happens to someone’s body. That ripple effect is widespread, and its consequences are severe.

The True Cost: Physical and Psychological Trauma

Circumcision is sold as a “routine” or “simple” procedure, but the reality is far from that. 

The immediate risks? Bleeding, infection, and even death—yes, death. It happens more than you think, especially in cases where medical oversight is inadequate. But the lasting damage is just as concerning. 

Circumcision permanently removes thousands of nerve endings, significantly reducing sensitivity for life. It’s a violation of the most basic human right: control over one’s own body.

Beyond the physical scars, there are psychological wounds. The trauma of circumcision—especially when it’s normalized and performed without consent—leaves deep emotional scars that last a lifetime.

“Research has shown that circumcised men suffer from alexithymia (impaired ability to identify and describe one’s emotions) at rates 20 percent higher than intact men and are up to 4.5 times more likely to be diagnosed with erectile dysfunction than their intact peers.”This Penis Business

This Penis Business, anti-circumcision book

Misinformation: The Root of the Problem

Despite clear evidence showing that circumcision is unnecessary and harmful, misinformation continues to fuel the practice. From outdated hygiene myths to false claims about HIV prevention, the reasons used to justify circumcision are based on cultural tradition and are further propagated by those who gain from the media and the lesser known for-profit aspect of the practice, not science.

That’s where Intact America comes in. We are challenging circumcision and fighting a campaign of misinformation that has convinced parents, doctors, and policymakers that circumcision is somehow beneficial. Your donations fund education, advocacy, and research to counter these harmful myths and promote bodily autonomy.

How Your Donations Make a Difference

You might wonder: what can my donation really do? The answer is: a lot. 

Every dollar helps us break the cycle of misinformation, push for policy changes, and protect the rights of boys to make decisions about their own bodies.

Here’s how your support makes an impact:

  • Educating new parents on the real risks of circumcision and helping them make informed decisions.
  • Training medical professionals to stop viewing circumcision as a routine procedure and to embrace intact care.
  • Supporting legal advocacy to protect boys’ rights to bodily autonomy and hold medical professionals accountable via the DoNoHarm.report
  • Fighting outdated public health policies that promote circumcision as a cure-all for non-existent issues.

Every dollar is a step toward dismantling a harmful, outdated system that profits from stripping people of their rights.

It Starts With You: A Movement for Change

The fight against circumcision is gaining momentum, and Intact America is leading the charge in the U.S. But we can’t do it alone. We’re up against centuries of tradition, misinformation, and cultural and institutional pressure. To shift the narrative, protect bodily autonomy, and ensure that every boy has the right to make his own choices about his body, we need your help.

By donating today, you become part of a movement that’s pushing for real change. Together, we can protect future generations from an unnecessary and harmful procedure

Join us in the fight for bodily autonomy—because every boy deserves the right to his own body.

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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.