Story by Spencer Adrian

Shortly after he was born, Matthew Hess’s parents opted to have him circumcised. He grew up not thinking anything about it, until nearly three decades later, when he noticed something just didn’t feel normal. “Sex had never felt quite right to me, and in my late twenties I noticed a significant decline in sexual sensation,” Hess says.
Believing this reduced sensation was a side effect of circumcision, Hess underwent a series of surgeries to restore his foreskin. Afterward, he began to notice an increase in sexual sensation. Today, Hess believes no child should undergo this elective procedure unwillingly, and he now speaks out against the operation. Hess is the president of MGMBill.org, an organization leading an “intactivist” campaign to ban the circumcision of minors.
From the early 1900s on, circumcision rates steadily rose in the US, peaking at almost 80 percent in the 1970s and 1980s. Since then, however, circumcision rates have declined, and a 2010 Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) report shows that as few as 55 percent of newborns are circumcised. The high rates of circumcision imply the procedure is a social norm even for the non-religious, but the declining number also indicates this normalcy is changing.
In a policy statement released by the American Academy of Pediatrics (AAP), the group stated that new research indicates that the “medical benefits of circumcision outweigh the risks.” The CDC and the World Health Organization also affirmed, based on recent data, that circumcision has been shown to help prevent diseases such as penile cancer and sexually transmitted infections. This is because penis foreskin can be easily ripped or damaged, increasing the risk of contracting diseases during sex. In many African countries, circumcision is used to prevent the transmission of HIV. In infants, circumcision helps reduce the risk of urinary tract infections as well as phimosis, a condition where the foreskin cannot be fully retracted from the head of the penis.
However, Hess’s intactivist movement, named for leaving the penis intact, argues that foreskin is a natural part of the body and should not be removed without a male’s consent. “I’m not opposed to voluntary adult circumcision, so long as a man chooses it for himself without coercion or undue influence,” he says. “Our organization is only trying to protect males from being circumcised against their will, not to stop them from altering their own genitals if they wish to do so.”
The Male Genital Mutilation (MGM) bill was released on the MGM website for public comment in 2003, and has since been revised and submitted to US congress eight times. Most recently, the bill was submitted in January 2012, while at the state level, intactivists have introduced proposals in 46 state legislatures. The bill, which was modeled after the 1996 US Female Genital Mutilation Act, would criminalize circumcising minors, except in cases when the surgery would positively impact a child’s health. Once the male is 18, however, he could elect for the procedure.
Passing such a law potentially carries huge ramifications for traditional Jewish and Muslim communities. Belief in circumcision for followers of the Jewish faith arises from the Hebrew Bible’s book of Genesis, which says on the eighth day a boy is to be circumcised. In Judaism, the traditional circumcision of an eight-day-old boy symbolizes the relationship between man and God. The circumcision ceremony, known as a bris, is performed by a mohel who blesses the baby before cutting away the foreskin. Males practicing Islam are also required by faith to be circumcised before entering into adulthood; but unlike the Jewish practice, Islamic circumcision isn’t commanded in the Qur’an.
For these religious reasons, the proposed circumcision ban is considered by some to be an infringement on First Amendment rights protecting the freedom of religion. Although the Bill of Rights establishes a right to religious expression, the language of First Amendment does have some limitations, and consequently, some religious practices have been outlawed. Polygamy, for example, was banned after the 1878 Reynolds v. The United States trial. During the case, the Supreme Court found Mormon George Reynolds guilty of bigamy (having more than one wife), although Reynolds claimed he was simply practicing his religion. The court justified its guilty verdict based on the premise that the government could not limit religious beliefs, but it could limit religious action.
In light of these claims, however, organizations such as the AAP and CDC remain neutral in their stance on the practice. As one co-author of the AAP policy, physician Douglas S. Diekema, told The New York Times last August regarding the academy’s announcement to recommend circumcision, “We’re not pushing everybody to circumcise their babies,” he said. “This is not really pro-circumcision. It falls in the middle. It’s pro-choice, for lack of a better word.”
But, psychotherapist Will Courtenay, author of Dying to be Men, a book promoting men and boys’ health, says he doesn’t recommend circumcision to new parents. “Based on available research, there isn’t sufficient scientific evidence for recommending circumcision,” Courtenay says. He also advises parents to wait a few days before opting for the procedure. The additional time, Courtenay says, gives the parents an opportunity to bond with the child before deciding whether to go through with the surgery. Courtenay believes circumcision is painful for a baby and says estimates show more than 100 boys die in the US each year during the procedure as a result of complications. These numbers have been contested by the CDC, which does not track circumcision-related deaths, according to The New York Times.
In October 2010, San Francisco residents began the process of gathering signatures to add a version of the MGM bill to the November 2011 city ballot. Passing of the bill would have made circumcising minors a misdemeanor punishable by a $1,000 fine and/ or one year in jail; however, in July 2011, San Francisco Superior Court Judge Loretta Giorgi ruled in favor of those opposing the measure and ordered its removal from the ballot. State law, Giorgi ruled, prevents local authorities from controlling the actions of health care professionals. Then, in response to the anti-circumcision bill, California Governor Jerry Brown signed bill AB-768, which prevents any California city from banning circumcision, into law on October 2, 2011.
Despite the recent setbacks in California, Hess and the intactivist movement continue to push to get MGM bills passed at the state and national levels. Until then, circumcision is a choice parents must make. For Hess, the debate is far from over, and he says the intactivists are making progress. “I think it’s more likely that laws banning circumcision will be enacted in Europe before the MGM Bill passes in the US,” Hess says. “I would say we are at least five years away from passing a federal law in America, although a state law could come sooner.”