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IOTM – Craig Garrett

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Blog, Intactivist of the Month
December 10, 2012

DECEMBER 2012: One of the biggest issues facing the intactivist movement is convincing legislators in each state to end Medicaid funding of circumcision. Craig Garrett, an active member of Colorado-NOCIRC, has been dedicated to education and advocacy for genital integrity for more than ten years—and his activism and outspokenness led directly to the Colorado legislature voting to end Medicaid funding for routine infant circumcision.

In addition to maintaining Colorado-NOCIRC’s website, Craig writes educational materials and pamphlets, organizes communication among intactivists within the state (see Craig along with other Colorado-NOCIRC activists in the photo below), makes presentations on circumcision to local natural childbirth groups, and is working to ensure elective circumcision stays off the list of Medicaid-reimbursable services in Colorado.

When the bill was passed in 2011 to end such funding, Craig noted that Colorado Medicaid was also paying for surgeries to repair botched circumcisions. “I know that there was at least one doctor in Colorado who had a full time job repairing botched newborn circumcisions. Repairing a botched newborn circumcision can be very expensive because it often involves one or more reconstructive surgeries. The reduced number of newborn circumcisions will result in fewer botched circumcisions, resulting in eIntact America: Craig Garrettven more cost savings.”

Colorado-NOCIRC activists with Craig Garrett (far right)

Craig has also become a major supporter of Intact America. “I am very proud of how Intact America has become a nationally recognized organization, and consistently gains the attention of the national media,” he says. “Reaching both social media and traditional news outlets is becoming ever more important, and Intact America is doing exactly that. I admire their hard work, vision, and strong stance in favor of bodily integrity rights.”

“Craig Garrett is a tremendous supporter of intactivism and Intact America,” says Georganne Chapin, Executive Director of IA. “He understands that both hard work and stable funding are essential to our cause, and he is right there, all the time, with both. Craig is also an excellent thinker and strategist for the movement, and is generous with his insights and ideas for future action. It is a pleasure working with him. Thank you, Craig!”

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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.