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Florida urologists warned not to circumcise four-year-old

INTACT AMERICA SENT LETTERS TO ALL FLORIDA UROLOGISTS
IN RESPONSE TO A RECENT CASE INVOLVING A BOY WHO
MIGHT BE CIRCUMCISED AGAINST HIS MOTHER’S WISHES.

Tarrytown, NY—January 15, 2015

Intact America, an organization that opposes the forced genital cutting of babies and children, sent letters this week to nearly one thousand urologist offices in the state of Florida. Cosigned by the executive directors of California-based Attorneys for the Rights of the Child and Seattle-based Doctors Opposing Circumcision, the letter requested that the urologists not circumcise the four-year-old boy.

The boy was caught in the middle of a dispute between his parents – the father who wants him to be circumcised, and the mother, of Boynton Beach, who opposes the circumcision on the grounds that her son is normal and healthy, and that the circumcision will put him at risk. According to court documents, the 4th District Court of Appeal (Case No. 4D14-1744) ruled against the mother, and allowed the father to pursue circumcision for his son, despite the fact that a pediatric urologist testified in court that the child is healthy and that the circumcision is not medically necessary.

On January 7, Intact America sent a certified letter to Dr. Charles E. Flack, the urologist who testified on behalf of the father, warning him to not circumcise the child. Similar letters were mailed this week in response to this court case to urologists licensed to practice in Florida cautioning them from carrying out this medically unnecessary surgery since the mother has gone on record as opposing the elective surgery.

Georganne Chapin, Executive Director of Intact America, stated: “In the absence of medical necessity, no one has the right to carry out permanently disfiguring medical procedures on a child. There is a groundswell of men protesting the fact that they were forcibly circumcised as children. Parents and doctors should take heed, and keep boys safe from risky surgery that removes healthy, normal sexual tissue and permanently damages their genitals.”

About Intact America:
Intact America is the leading organization dedicated to ending infant and child circumcision. With its membership of over 60,000 intactivists, Intact America works toward creating a world in which all people of all ages are protected from circumcision or any other permanent genital alteration inflicted on them without their informed consent. Its mission is to educate parents, doctors, nurses, and the American public that the foreskin is a normal, natural part of the human body, designed by nature to provide protection and pleasure.

Intact America is based in Tarrytown, N.Y. Visit Intact America at www.intactamerica.org, on Facebook, and on Twitter.

Author

  • Jeannie Ashford is a writer, editor, public relations professional, and communications specialist who has supported Intact America for more than a decade. She received a BA in English Honors at Queens College, City University of New York, and an MS in Journalism from Columbia University.

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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.