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Abortion: An Acorn is Not an Oak Tree
Circumcision: The Stone Age in the Steel Age
Abortion: An Acorn is Not an Oak Tree
When the Supreme Court of the United States of America decided on January 22, 1973, that women have a right to control their own reproductive destinies, it struck down the state laws which had made early abortions illegal. This allowed women to take a great step forward in their quest for social equality with men. Unfortunately, the Court was not as well-informed on the scientific and philosophical issues as it might have been, and although it came to what I consider to be the right conclusions, it did so partly for the wrong reasons.
While the Supreme Court did recognize the importance of the question "Is the fetus a person?" it was unable to break away from the irrelevant question "When does life begin?" Consequently, the court's deliberations were hampered by an incorrect formulation of the central question at issue. Clearly, the question does not concern the beginning of "life." The unfertilized egg is alive, the sperm is alive, and no one has ever suggested that live babies result from dead sperm or eggs. Human life is part of a living continuum stretching back to the dawning days of the planet.
Despite the shaky scientific foundations of its decision, the Court made a statement of great practical utility. It declared, in effect, that during the first trimester of pregnancy, when abortion is far safer for a woman than is childbirth, essentially no restrictions can be placed upon a woman's right to privacy and upon her right to refuse to provide room and board for an uninvited guest. During the second trimester also, a woman's rights overshadow the "rights" of the fetus. During this period, the state may regulate abortion, but only to provide for the well-being of the woman—not because of fetal "rights."
Only during the third trimester, when the fetus becomes "viable"—capable of surviving on its own outside the mother's body—does the state begin to have a legitimate interest in the "rights" of the unborn. Even so, the mother's health is judged to be of greater importance than the life of the fetus.
Since the legalization of abortion in America, a hurricane of opposition has developed. The most backward religious groups, Protestant as well as Catholic, have rallied to the appealing "Right-to-Life" slogan. No contrary slogan of equal appeal has yet been invented. "Freedom of Choice" just doesn't cut the mustard. “Life with Dignity" is so-so, and there don't appear to be any others. Thus, to oppose these fanatics is to appear to be anti-life and against rights. The "wrong" of right-to-life is not always easy to see.
Increasingly, ethically-concerned people have looked to American Atheists for answers to the questions raised by believers in single-celled people. Although the questions are too numerous to deal with in a single article, I have, in the lines which follow, dealt with a representative sample of the questions which have been asked in the course of both formal and informal—informal sometimes to the verge of riot—discussions.
Isn't abortion more a social problem than a religious problem?
Of course, abortion—like all aspects of human reproductive behavior and personal freedom—is a "social" problem. If the Roman Catholic Church and several of the more strident fundamentalist Protestant churches were not, however, trying to force their religious dogmas on society by force of law and constitutional amendment, women would find less opposition to their quest for self-determination in the area of reproductive rights. Opposing freedom of choice in the matter of abortion is tantamount to advocating compulsory pregnancy after rape, incest, or contraceptive failure. In the matter of abortion, as with all "pelvic issues," most of the shackles which restrain human freedom have been imposed by religious groups, directly or indirectly.
But doesn't freedom of religion allow the Roman Catholic Church to speak out on moral issues and make known its unchanging opposition
to the killing of unbornbabies?
The Roman Catholic Church has the right to speak out, but it does not have the moral right to force its unprovable theological opinions on non-Catholics. Moreover, the term "unborn baby" is a misuse of words. By definition, a baby is an individual who has already been born. Before birth, the organism is called an "embryo" or "fetus," depending on the degree of development.
As for the "unchanging opposition" of the Roman Catholic Church, its all-out opposition to abortion dates only from the microbiological discovery of human eggs and zygotes in the nineteenth century and the abandonment of the Aristotelian views held by the church for centuries. A distinction was made between the "formed" and the "unformed" fetus. An unformed fetus contained no "soul" and received its soul only later on—40 days after conception in males and 80 days in females! St. Augustine accepted this idea and taught that abortion of the fetus informatus warranted only a fine, but abortion of the fetus formatus was murder. The distinction was sanctified by Gratian in his codification of canon law in 1140. The modern idea that the zygote (fertilized egg) has a soul and that abortion at any stage of development is murder derives from a modern, unsuccessful attempt by religion to adapt itself to scientific knowledge.
But doesn't the Bible teach that abortion is a sin?
The King James Version of the Bible does not even mention the word "abortion," let alone condemn it or say it is murder. In Exodus 21:22 (New English Bible, NEB), it says:
When in the course of a brawl, a man knocks against a pregnant woman so that she has a miscarriage but suffers no further hurt, then the offender must pay whatever fine the woman's husband demands...
That this is roughly the biblical equivalent of a parking ticket is clear when one realizes that a son can be stoned to death simply for being a glutton, a drunkard, and rebelling against his parents (Deut. 21:20-21).
Not only does the Bible not condemn abortion, the jealousy ritual described in the fifth chapter of the book of Numbers(intelligible only in the NEB translation) would appear to make Jehovah himself an abortionist.According to the quaint and superstitious procedure prescribed for determining if a wife has been unfaithful to her husband, after a woman drinks the "water of contention" containing magic ink washed off from a scroll of curses, she will suffer a miscarriage (spontaneous abortion) if she is guilty of adultery.
How can you say the Bible doesn't have anything to say on abortion?
Doesn't the first chapter of Luke tell about John the Baptist
leaping in his mother's womb after recognizing Mary's voice?
First of all, we may note that this fable has nothing to say about abortion. Second of all, this fairy tale is an obvious attempt to show the miraculous origins of both John and Jesus. If only a miracle can make a six-month-old fetus understand speech and practice gymnastics, it follows that a normal fetus can't do such things.Thus, only a miracle can give a fetus the characteristics of a person. A normal fetus is not a person.
But doesn'tthe fetus move, show sensitivity to pain,
and have a heartbeat and brain waves?
All this is true, but this does not make the fetus a person. To be a person, there must be evidence of a personality. Dogs, frogs, and earthworms have all the characteristics listed, but that is insufficient to make them persons.
A brief review of human embryology is in order. It takes more than ten days after fertilization for the conceptus to become anything more than a hollow ball of cells at the stage of development of certain colonial algae. During the first week, it is free-floating and not even attached to the uterine wall. Not until the beginning of the fourth week does a heart begin to beat, and then it is two-chambered like that of a fish. Not until the end of the fifth week is there evidence of the beginning of formation of the cerebral hemispheres, and they are merely hollow bubbles of cells. Hemisphere development reaches reptile-grade during the fourth month, and primitive mammal-grade (opossum) during the sixth month.
Figure 1shows the human fetus after five weeks of development. A prominent yolk-sac is visible, as if the embryo were that of a reptile developing within a yolk-containing egg. The heart is two-chambered like that of a fish, and in the neck region we see prominent gill-clefts. The arteries carrying blood from the heart to the gills recapitulate in minute detail the aortic-arch structures of fishes. Like the embryonic gills of fishes, the embryonic gills of humans lack the feathery respiratory tissues characteristic of mature gills.
This alleged person has two tiny, hollow bubbles of tissue for cerebral hemispheres, and it has mesonephric kidneys such as are found in fishes and amphibians. In fact, it still has traces of pronephric kidneys, the type found in the most primitive vertebrate known to science, the hermaphroditic hagfish!
Sexually, the embryo is indeterminate, still possessing an all-purpose anal opening, the cloaca. Although later in development this structure will become partitioned (into two separate openings in males, three in females), at this stage it is just like that of fishes. Just posterior to the cloaca is a tail which resembles the tail of a salamander.
In the movie Silent Scream a twelve-week-old fetus knows it'sbeing killed.
How can you deny the evidence of that film?
As we have mentioned already, the brain of the three-month-old fetus is still at the reptile grade of development. It will be four weeks more before the cells in the cerebral cortex develop their characteristic six-layered structure, and only after that will the necessary nervous connections be made for processing of sensory inputs. At this stage, behavior is entirely reflexive, as in earthworms. Only long after birth will the nervous system be developed sufficiently for the perception of "the most mortal danger imaginable," to quote the narrator of the film.
On March 11, 1985, the New York Times printed an editorial critical of Silent Scream. Not only did the medical experts quoted by the Times confirm my opinion that the film showed nothing at all interpretable—that it was, in effect, a movie version of a Rorschach ink-blot test—the editorial revealed thata bit of fraud was involved too. According to Dr. Jennifer Niebyl of the Johns Hopkins School of Medicine, "right before [Dr. Nathanson] says the fetus is reacting and fighting aggressively, he has the film in very slow motion. Then, as the suction catheter is placed, he turns it on to regular speed. It's really very misleading."
Misleading indeed! The whole thing is just another religious hoax.
I agree that if the mother's life is endangered by pregnancy
she should be allowed an abortion if it is needed to save her life.
But I don't believe abortion should be a substitute for birth control.
We agree that abortion is a less desirable option as compared with contraception. But contraception often fails, and the same church which opposes abortion also opposes sterilization and contraception—thus creating a greater need for abortion than otherwise would exist. If one admits abortion to save a woman's life, one is admitting that the fetus is less important than the woman who incubates it. Once one has admitted this, one no longer has any grounds to accord full, legal personhood upon the fetus or—as extremists like Helms, Falwell, and Wojtyla (alias Pope John Paul II) do—upon the fertilized egg itself.
All right, I changed my mind.
Abortion should not be allowed to savea woman's life.
I think the soul does enter the zygote at the momentof conception.
If the single-celled zygote is equal to a full-grown woman, it follows that a full-grown woman can't be worth more than a single cell! Anyone who values women so little is a menace to society and shouldn't be allowed to run loose without a leash.
With regard to "souls," there is no evidence that such things exist, let alone form a part of the fertilized egg. If a single soul inhabits a single fertilized egg, identical twins are in big trouble, since such twins result from the splitting apart of a single conceptus. Perhaps one twin has the soul of the zygote and the other twin is a soulless zombie! In some cases, one "twin" doesn't develop fully, and we have a two-headed or two-bodied monster (see Figure 2). Furthermore, modern biotechnological possibilities make the whole subject of "ensoulment" a laughable, medieval bit of theological befuddlement. It is possible to take two separate zygotes—each supposedly with its own "soul"—and fuse them into a singleconceptus. Would the resultant single baby born after such fusion have two souls?
While the Supreme Court did recognize the importance of the question "Is the fetus a person?" it was unable to break away from the irrelevant question "When does life begin?" Consequently, the court's deliberations were hampered by an incorrect formulation of the central question at issue. Clearly, the question does not concern the beginning of "life." The unfertilized egg is alive, the sperm is alive, and no one has ever suggested that live babies result from dead sperm or eggs. Human life is part of a living continuum stretching back to the dawning days of the planet.
Despite the shaky scientific foundations of its decision, the Court made a statement of great practical utility. It declared, in effect, that during the first trimester of pregnancy, when abortion is far safer for a woman than is childbirth, essentially no restrictions can be placed upon a woman's right to privacy and upon her right to refuse to provide room and board for an uninvited guest. During the second trimester also, a woman's rights overshadow the "rights" of the fetus. During this period, the state may regulate abortion, but only to provide for the well-being of the woman—not because of fetal "rights."
Only during the third trimester, when the fetus becomes "viable"—capable of surviving on its own outside the mother's body—does the state begin to have a legitimate interest in the "rights" of the unborn. Even so, the mother's health is judged to be of greater importance than the life of the fetus.
Since the legalization of abortion in America, a hurricane of opposition has developed. The most backward religious groups, Protestant as well as Catholic, have rallied to the appealing "Right-to-Life" slogan. No contrary slogan of equal appeal has yet been invented. "Freedom of Choice" just doesn't cut the mustard. “Life with Dignity" is so-so, and there don't appear to be any others. Thus, to oppose these fanatics is to appear to be anti-life and against rights. The "wrong" of right-to-life is not always easy to see.
Increasingly, ethically-concerned people have looked to American Atheists for answers to the questions raised by believers in single-celled people. Although the questions are too numerous to deal with in a single article, I have, in the lines which follow, dealt with a representative sample of the questions which have been asked in the course of both formal and informal—informal sometimes to the verge of riot—discussions.
Isn't abortion more a social problem than a religious problem?
Of course, abortion—like all aspects of human reproductive behavior and personal freedom—is a "social" problem. If the Roman Catholic Church and several of the more strident fundamentalist Protestant churches were not, however, trying to force their religious dogmas on society by force of law and constitutional amendment, women would find less opposition to their quest for self-determination in the area of reproductive rights. Opposing freedom of choice in the matter of abortion is tantamount to advocating compulsory pregnancy after rape, incest, or contraceptive failure. In the matter of abortion, as with all "pelvic issues," most of the shackles which restrain human freedom have been imposed by religious groups, directly or indirectly.
But doesn't freedom of religion allow the Roman Catholic Church to speak out on moral issues and make known its unchanging opposition
to the killing of unbornbabies?
The Roman Catholic Church has the right to speak out, but it does not have the moral right to force its unprovable theological opinions on non-Catholics. Moreover, the term "unborn baby" is a misuse of words. By definition, a baby is an individual who has already been born. Before birth, the organism is called an "embryo" or "fetus," depending on the degree of development.
As for the "unchanging opposition" of the Roman Catholic Church, its all-out opposition to abortion dates only from the microbiological discovery of human eggs and zygotes in the nineteenth century and the abandonment of the Aristotelian views held by the church for centuries. A distinction was made between the "formed" and the "unformed" fetus. An unformed fetus contained no "soul" and received its soul only later on—40 days after conception in males and 80 days in females! St. Augustine accepted this idea and taught that abortion of the fetus informatus warranted only a fine, but abortion of the fetus formatus was murder. The distinction was sanctified by Gratian in his codification of canon law in 1140. The modern idea that the zygote (fertilized egg) has a soul and that abortion at any stage of development is murder derives from a modern, unsuccessful attempt by religion to adapt itself to scientific knowledge.
But doesn't the Bible teach that abortion is a sin?
The King James Version of the Bible does not even mention the word "abortion," let alone condemn it or say it is murder. In Exodus 21:22 (New English Bible, NEB), it says:
When in the course of a brawl, a man knocks against a pregnant woman so that she has a miscarriage but suffers no further hurt, then the offender must pay whatever fine the woman's husband demands...
That this is roughly the biblical equivalent of a parking ticket is clear when one realizes that a son can be stoned to death simply for being a glutton, a drunkard, and rebelling against his parents (Deut. 21:20-21).
Not only does the Bible not condemn abortion, the jealousy ritual described in the fifth chapter of the book of Numbers(intelligible only in the NEB translation) would appear to make Jehovah himself an abortionist.According to the quaint and superstitious procedure prescribed for determining if a wife has been unfaithful to her husband, after a woman drinks the "water of contention" containing magic ink washed off from a scroll of curses, she will suffer a miscarriage (spontaneous abortion) if she is guilty of adultery.
How can you say the Bible doesn't have anything to say on abortion?
Doesn't the first chapter of Luke tell about John the Baptist
leaping in his mother's womb after recognizing Mary's voice?
First of all, we may note that this fable has nothing to say about abortion. Second of all, this fairy tale is an obvious attempt to show the miraculous origins of both John and Jesus. If only a miracle can make a six-month-old fetus understand speech and practice gymnastics, it follows that a normal fetus can't do such things.Thus, only a miracle can give a fetus the characteristics of a person. A normal fetus is not a person.
But doesn'tthe fetus move, show sensitivity to pain,
and have a heartbeat and brain waves?
All this is true, but this does not make the fetus a person. To be a person, there must be evidence of a personality. Dogs, frogs, and earthworms have all the characteristics listed, but that is insufficient to make them persons.
A brief review of human embryology is in order. It takes more than ten days after fertilization for the conceptus to become anything more than a hollow ball of cells at the stage of development of certain colonial algae. During the first week, it is free-floating and not even attached to the uterine wall. Not until the beginning of the fourth week does a heart begin to beat, and then it is two-chambered like that of a fish. Not until the end of the fifth week is there evidence of the beginning of formation of the cerebral hemispheres, and they are merely hollow bubbles of cells. Hemisphere development reaches reptile-grade during the fourth month, and primitive mammal-grade (opossum) during the sixth month.
Figure 1shows the human fetus after five weeks of development. A prominent yolk-sac is visible, as if the embryo were that of a reptile developing within a yolk-containing egg. The heart is two-chambered like that of a fish, and in the neck region we see prominent gill-clefts. The arteries carrying blood from the heart to the gills recapitulate in minute detail the aortic-arch structures of fishes. Like the embryonic gills of fishes, the embryonic gills of humans lack the feathery respiratory tissues characteristic of mature gills.
This alleged person has two tiny, hollow bubbles of tissue for cerebral hemispheres, and it has mesonephric kidneys such as are found in fishes and amphibians. In fact, it still has traces of pronephric kidneys, the type found in the most primitive vertebrate known to science, the hermaphroditic hagfish!
Sexually, the embryo is indeterminate, still possessing an all-purpose anal opening, the cloaca. Although later in development this structure will become partitioned (into two separate openings in males, three in females), at this stage it is just like that of fishes. Just posterior to the cloaca is a tail which resembles the tail of a salamander.
In the movie Silent Scream a twelve-week-old fetus knows it'sbeing killed.
How can you deny the evidence of that film?
As we have mentioned already, the brain of the three-month-old fetus is still at the reptile grade of development. It will be four weeks more before the cells in the cerebral cortex develop their characteristic six-layered structure, and only after that will the necessary nervous connections be made for processing of sensory inputs. At this stage, behavior is entirely reflexive, as in earthworms. Only long after birth will the nervous system be developed sufficiently for the perception of "the most mortal danger imaginable," to quote the narrator of the film.
On March 11, 1985, the New York Times printed an editorial critical of Silent Scream. Not only did the medical experts quoted by the Times confirm my opinion that the film showed nothing at all interpretable—that it was, in effect, a movie version of a Rorschach ink-blot test—the editorial revealed thata bit of fraud was involved too. According to Dr. Jennifer Niebyl of the Johns Hopkins School of Medicine, "right before [Dr. Nathanson] says the fetus is reacting and fighting aggressively, he has the film in very slow motion. Then, as the suction catheter is placed, he turns it on to regular speed. It's really very misleading."
Misleading indeed! The whole thing is just another religious hoax.
I agree that if the mother's life is endangered by pregnancy
she should be allowed an abortion if it is needed to save her life.
But I don't believe abortion should be a substitute for birth control.
We agree that abortion is a less desirable option as compared with contraception. But contraception often fails, and the same church which opposes abortion also opposes sterilization and contraception—thus creating a greater need for abortion than otherwise would exist. If one admits abortion to save a woman's life, one is admitting that the fetus is less important than the woman who incubates it. Once one has admitted this, one no longer has any grounds to accord full, legal personhood upon the fetus or—as extremists like Helms, Falwell, and Wojtyla (alias Pope John Paul II) do—upon the fertilized egg itself.
All right, I changed my mind.
Abortion should not be allowed to savea woman's life.
I think the soul does enter the zygote at the momentof conception.
If the single-celled zygote is equal to a full-grown woman, it follows that a full-grown woman can't be worth more than a single cell! Anyone who values women so little is a menace to society and shouldn't be allowed to run loose without a leash.
With regard to "souls," there is no evidence that such things exist, let alone form a part of the fertilized egg. If a single soul inhabits a single fertilized egg, identical twins are in big trouble, since such twins result from the splitting apart of a single conceptus. Perhaps one twin has the soul of the zygote and the other twin is a soulless zombie! In some cases, one "twin" doesn't develop fully, and we have a two-headed or two-bodied monster (see Figure 2). Furthermore, modern biotechnological possibilities make the whole subject of "ensoulment" a laughable, medieval bit of theological befuddlement. It is possible to take two separate zygotes—each supposedly with its own "soul"—and fuse them into a singleconceptus. Would the resultant single baby born after such fusion have two souls?
Figure 1. [Redrawn from Bradley M. Patten, Human Embryology, 3d ed., New York: McGraw-Hill, 1968] A five-week-old human embryo, drawn to eliminate the natural curvatures and to increase visibility of fish-like features. Easily seen are the gill-clefts, the two-chambered heart, the tail, the unpartitioned c1oaca (anal opening), and the prominent yolk-sac (a reptilian feature).
But the zygote has forty-six human chromosomes and is a unique genetic being.
It is at least a potential human being
and should be protected as something very valuable.
The possession of forty-six chromosomes does not make a cell a person. Most of the cells of your body contain these forty-six chromosomes, but that does not make a white corpuscle a person! As for the significance of uniqueness, identical quintuplets are genetically identical, yet they have personal identities apart from their genetic endowment. The development of cloning will make the cellular offspring from a single zygote—all the cells being genetically identical—into a veritable army of genetically identical but different persons. Moreover, not every zygote contains forty-six chromosomes. Zygotes destined to develop into mentally retarded individuals with Down's Syndrome ("Mongolism") have forty-seven chromosomes, and a variety of other developmental defects are known which involve possession of fewer than forty-six chromosomes. Quite literally, such individuals are born without all their pieces! If possession of forty-six chromosomes makes some thing a person, then it would seem that possession of a different number would make something else.
As for potential human beings, an acorn is not an oak tree! With cloning, every nucleated cell in your body is a potential person. This being the case, brushing one's teeth should be a crime on a par with murder, since one destroys countless epithelia—"potential people" with every scrape across the gums. Fully one-third of all conceptions end in spontaneous abortion, often at very early stages of development. Is god to blame for this? Should he/she/it be blamed for the destruction of so many "potential people"? And what of the case where the conceptus develops into a creature lacking a cerebral cortex?
That not every conception leads to a "living soul" has been long recognized by the Roman Catholic Church. According to a 1954 edition of the Codex Juris Canonici, the Latin manual of church law, "Monsters and prodigies must always be baptized conditionally" (Canon 748, my translation). In other words, the church isn't sure if these things are persons—and in need of baptism—or not! The canon continues, "When in doubt as to whether one or more are persons, one is to be baptized absolutely, the others conditionally." At this point, the margin of my copy of the canon law has been annotated by some theology student of the past, "baptize each head absolutely."
But the zygote has forty-six human chromosomes and is a unique genetic being.
It is at least a potential human being
and should be protected as something very valuable.
The possession of forty-six chromosomes does not make a cell a person. Most of the cells of your body contain these forty-six chromosomes, but that does not make a white corpuscle a person! As for the significance of uniqueness, identical quintuplets are genetically identical, yet they have personal identities apart from their genetic endowment. The development of cloning will make the cellular offspring from a single zygote—all the cells being genetically identical—into a veritable army of genetically identical but different persons. Moreover, not every zygote contains forty-six chromosomes. Zygotes destined to develop into mentally retarded individuals with Down's Syndrome ("Mongolism") have forty-seven chromosomes, and a variety of other developmental defects are known which involve possession of fewer than forty-six chromosomes. Quite literally, such individuals are born without all their pieces! If possession of forty-six chromosomes makes some thing a person, then it would seem that possession of a different number would make something else.
As for potential human beings, an acorn is not an oak tree! With cloning, every nucleated cell in your body is a potential person. This being the case, brushing one's teeth should be a crime on a par with murder, since one destroys countless epithelia—"potential people" with every scrape across the gums. Fully one-third of all conceptions end in spontaneous abortion, often at very early stages of development. Is god to blame for this? Should he/she/it be blamed for the destruction of so many "potential people"? And what of the case where the conceptus develops into a creature lacking a cerebral cortex?
That not every conception leads to a "living soul" has been long recognized by the Roman Catholic Church. According to a 1954 edition of the Codex Juris Canonici, the Latin manual of church law, "Monsters and prodigies must always be baptized conditionally" (Canon 748, my translation). In other words, the church isn't sure if these things are persons—and in need of baptism—or not! The canon continues, "When in doubt as to whether one or more are persons, one is to be baptized absolutely, the others conditionally." At this point, the margin of my copy of the canon law has been annotated by some theology student of the past, "baptize each head absolutely."
Figure 2. [A, B, C, D, E, G, H, and J adapted from Patten, supra, 1968; F and I adapted from Hideo Nishimura et al., Prenatal Development of the Human With Special Reference to Cranial Facial Structures: An Atlas, D.H.E. W. Pub. #(NIH)77-946, Washington, DC: U.S. Government Printing Office, 1977] A bouquet of human monsters. A.A two-headed monster. B. A footless monster called a sirenomelus. C. Siamese twins joined at the head, in which the body of one twin has not developed. D. A monster resulting from incomplete fusion of left and right sides of head and failure to cover what there is of the brain. E. Would-be identical twins attached to a single placenta, with one twin being nothing more than a head. F. A stillborn fetus with facial malformations including cyclopia, low-set ears, and microstomia. G. A monster with one head but two bodies. H. A cyclops with proboscis-like structures. I. A monster in which brain abnormalities cause exotic deformations of the face. J. An early embryo in which the head and limbs remain undifferentiated, but the tail is clearly present_ According to Jesse Helms, these are all "persons" (since they developed from fertilized eggs) and should be allowed to vote. It is left as an exercise to the reader to decide just how many votes to reserve for this "bouquet."
So there you have it. Even the "modern" Roman Catholic Church admits that not every conception is a person. Not every abortion is "murder"!
As a clincher, we may mention the case where twins start to develop from the zygote, but one develops into a dermoid "nidus," a nest-like growth of hair, teeth, and mucous membranes. Not everything born of woman becomes a person. Potentiality is not actuality.
You sound like Hitler!
In general, Adolf Hitler was opposed to abortion and considered himself to be a good Roman Catholic. Atheists, unlike Hitler, emphasize personal freedom, not only in the realm of reproductive behavior, but in all spheres of human activity. We oppose only those behaviors which cause demonstrable harm to other persons or endanger the survival of the human species. Just think how much better the world would have been if Hitler's mother had had an abortion!
The opponents of freedom of choice generally are the same people who believe in the biblical notion that women are second-class creatures. They belong to churches
which suppress women on the grounds that they are god's afterthought —a spare rib grown into a temptress who brought destruction into the Garden of Eden. They dwell upon biblical proof-texts such as I Cor. 11:3, 7·9:
The head of every man is Christ; and the head of the woman is the man.
… [man] is the image and glory of god; but the woman is the glory of the man. For the man is not of the woman, but the woman of the man. Neither was the man created for the woman, but the woman for the man.
And religionists just love I Cor. 14:34·35:
Let your women keep silence in the churches: for it is not permitted unto them to speak; but they are commanded to be under obedience . . . and if they will learn anything, let them ask their husbands at home: for it is a shame for women to speak in the church·
Fortunately, in America it is not a shame for women to speak outside a church! Atheists cannot understand how any self-respecting woman can allow herself to be degraded by a church and yet continue to sacrifice her individuality upon the altar built by her patriarchal oppressors. Within the Bible-believing churches, self-respect is not available to women. Only if women come out of the churches can they develop a sense of self-respect.
An Atheist woman is a complete person in her own right. She works with men as an equal. She has a right to decide how and when to employ all the organ systems of her own body. She is worth more than a fetus and infinitely more than a zygote! No pope or preacher or president has the moral right to tell her that she must submit to the doctrine of “obedience." No one has the right to deny to her the self-determination granted automatically to men. Let no one ever again subordinate the rights of actual persons —women—to the imagined rights of eggs!
So there you have it. Even the "modern" Roman Catholic Church admits that not every conception is a person. Not every abortion is "murder"!
As a clincher, we may mention the case where twins start to develop from the zygote, but one develops into a dermoid "nidus," a nest-like growth of hair, teeth, and mucous membranes. Not everything born of woman becomes a person. Potentiality is not actuality.
You sound like Hitler!
In general, Adolf Hitler was opposed to abortion and considered himself to be a good Roman Catholic. Atheists, unlike Hitler, emphasize personal freedom, not only in the realm of reproductive behavior, but in all spheres of human activity. We oppose only those behaviors which cause demonstrable harm to other persons or endanger the survival of the human species. Just think how much better the world would have been if Hitler's mother had had an abortion!
The opponents of freedom of choice generally are the same people who believe in the biblical notion that women are second-class creatures. They belong to churches
which suppress women on the grounds that they are god's afterthought —a spare rib grown into a temptress who brought destruction into the Garden of Eden. They dwell upon biblical proof-texts such as I Cor. 11:3, 7·9:
The head of every man is Christ; and the head of the woman is the man.
… [man] is the image and glory of god; but the woman is the glory of the man. For the man is not of the woman, but the woman of the man. Neither was the man created for the woman, but the woman for the man.
And religionists just love I Cor. 14:34·35:
Let your women keep silence in the churches: for it is not permitted unto them to speak; but they are commanded to be under obedience . . . and if they will learn anything, let them ask their husbands at home: for it is a shame for women to speak in the church·
Fortunately, in America it is not a shame for women to speak outside a church! Atheists cannot understand how any self-respecting woman can allow herself to be degraded by a church and yet continue to sacrifice her individuality upon the altar built by her patriarchal oppressors. Within the Bible-believing churches, self-respect is not available to women. Only if women come out of the churches can they develop a sense of self-respect.
An Atheist woman is a complete person in her own right. She works with men as an equal. She has a right to decide how and when to employ all the organ systems of her own body. She is worth more than a fetus and infinitely more than a zygote! No pope or preacher or president has the moral right to tell her that she must submit to the doctrine of “obedience." No one has the right to deny to her the self-determination granted automatically to men. Let no one ever again subordinate the rights of actual persons —women—to the imagined rights of eggs!
Circumcision: The Stone Age in the Steel Age
Genital mutilations of both men and women have their origins in humankind's most misguided past. Nonetheless, these atrocities are common today.
An inscription in the Great Temple at Karnak records the triumph of Merneptah1 [Regnant 1225–1215 B.C.E. (Before the Common Era)] over Libyan invaders of Egypt. "Then returned the captains of archers, the infantry, and chariotry, every contingent of the army," it reads, "driving asses before them, laden with the uncircumcised phalli of the country of Libya." The hieroglyphic catalogue of the vanquished lists six "children of the chief of Libya whose uncircumcised phalli were carried off," and 6,359 "Libyans, slain, whose uncircumcised phalli were carried off." It also makes note of the "Ekwesh ... who had no foreskins, slain, whose hands were carried off, for they had no foreskins." [James Henry Breasted, Ancient Records of Egypt: Historical Documents, vol. 3 (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 19(6), pp. 247-9)]
The distinction between uncircumcised Libyans and circumcised Egyptians was the difference between subhuman barbarians and the only true humans—the Egyptians. (By what rationale the circumcised "Ekwesh" were adjudged subhuman is not known.) The Egyptian custom of circumcision derives from very early antiquity, inscriptions from mastaba tombs of the Sixth Dynasty (2625-2475 B.C.E.?) depicting the operation in process (see Figure 1). It is believed that the Egyptians borrowed the custom from Black African cultures farther south. The fact that the Egyptians circumcised their boys at the time of puberty makes it likely that the origins of the custom are to be sought in the religious rituals of Stone Age fertility cults. Nevertheless, no inscriptions are known which ascribe religious significance to this act of sexual mutilation. Only later, among the Jews, would phallus-flaying become a sacred act. Among the Jews (and also among the Moslems) as among the Egyptians, circumcision was the emblem of the chosen of god: the uncircumcised goyim were barbarians, on par with dogs.
The origins of circumcision rites derive, it can scarcely be doubted, from the sex-mutilation ceremonies of long forgotten Stone Age fertility cults. Acts such as piercing the penis with stingray spines to make it bleed (once practiced by various "civilized" Central American tribes), subincision (slicing the underside of the penis lengthwise down to the urethra, diverting urine and semen away from the end of the organ), unilateral castration (removal of one testicle), and removal of the foreskin appear often to serve as sacrifices made to fertility gods or goddesses to ensure the fructifying blessings of the deities. Sexual sacrifices—like all religious sacrifices—appear to involve quid pro quo situations: covenants in which the votary performs certain acts in exchange for certain services to be performed by the divinities. Sometimes the magical services of the deities are expected to extend beyond the individual offering the sacrifice, as in the circumcision rites of certain pre-civilized societies yet today—where the severed foreskin may be eaten by a younger brother in expectation of increased strength. (When the foreskin is to be eaten, it is often roasted, and there may be officials who can foretell the sexual fortune of its former owner by interpreting the pattern into which the tissue has shriveled.)
The Jewish Scriptures do not record the obvious fact that the Jews borrowed the practice of circumcision from the Egyptians. Rather, they describe the practice as originating from a conversation between a small-town divinity (Yahweh) and a legendary ancestor of the Jews (Abraham). According to the tale in the seventeenth chapter of Genesis, Abraham was ninety-nine years old when Yahweh suddenly introduced himself to the patriarch by announcing, "I am god almighty!" Instead of suffering cardiac arrest, Abraham appears to have whipped out a notebook and taken down god's instructions word-for-word.
An inscription in the Great Temple at Karnak records the triumph of Merneptah1 [Regnant 1225–1215 B.C.E. (Before the Common Era)] over Libyan invaders of Egypt. "Then returned the captains of archers, the infantry, and chariotry, every contingent of the army," it reads, "driving asses before them, laden with the uncircumcised phalli of the country of Libya." The hieroglyphic catalogue of the vanquished lists six "children of the chief of Libya whose uncircumcised phalli were carried off," and 6,359 "Libyans, slain, whose uncircumcised phalli were carried off." It also makes note of the "Ekwesh ... who had no foreskins, slain, whose hands were carried off, for they had no foreskins." [James Henry Breasted, Ancient Records of Egypt: Historical Documents, vol. 3 (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 19(6), pp. 247-9)]
The distinction between uncircumcised Libyans and circumcised Egyptians was the difference between subhuman barbarians and the only true humans—the Egyptians. (By what rationale the circumcised "Ekwesh" were adjudged subhuman is not known.) The Egyptian custom of circumcision derives from very early antiquity, inscriptions from mastaba tombs of the Sixth Dynasty (2625-2475 B.C.E.?) depicting the operation in process (see Figure 1). It is believed that the Egyptians borrowed the custom from Black African cultures farther south. The fact that the Egyptians circumcised their boys at the time of puberty makes it likely that the origins of the custom are to be sought in the religious rituals of Stone Age fertility cults. Nevertheless, no inscriptions are known which ascribe religious significance to this act of sexual mutilation. Only later, among the Jews, would phallus-flaying become a sacred act. Among the Jews (and also among the Moslems) as among the Egyptians, circumcision was the emblem of the chosen of god: the uncircumcised goyim were barbarians, on par with dogs.
The origins of circumcision rites derive, it can scarcely be doubted, from the sex-mutilation ceremonies of long forgotten Stone Age fertility cults. Acts such as piercing the penis with stingray spines to make it bleed (once practiced by various "civilized" Central American tribes), subincision (slicing the underside of the penis lengthwise down to the urethra, diverting urine and semen away from the end of the organ), unilateral castration (removal of one testicle), and removal of the foreskin appear often to serve as sacrifices made to fertility gods or goddesses to ensure the fructifying blessings of the deities. Sexual sacrifices—like all religious sacrifices—appear to involve quid pro quo situations: covenants in which the votary performs certain acts in exchange for certain services to be performed by the divinities. Sometimes the magical services of the deities are expected to extend beyond the individual offering the sacrifice, as in the circumcision rites of certain pre-civilized societies yet today—where the severed foreskin may be eaten by a younger brother in expectation of increased strength. (When the foreskin is to be eaten, it is often roasted, and there may be officials who can foretell the sexual fortune of its former owner by interpreting the pattern into which the tissue has shriveled.)
The Jewish Scriptures do not record the obvious fact that the Jews borrowed the practice of circumcision from the Egyptians. Rather, they describe the practice as originating from a conversation between a small-town divinity (Yahweh) and a legendary ancestor of the Jews (Abraham). According to the tale in the seventeenth chapter of Genesis, Abraham was ninety-nine years old when Yahweh suddenly introduced himself to the patriarch by announcing, "I am god almighty!" Instead of suffering cardiac arrest, Abraham appears to have whipped out a notebook and taken down god's instructions word-for-word.
Figure 1. Circumcision in the early Sixth Dynasty Egypt. Mastaba of Ankhmahor, Saqqara. (Redrawn with corrections from page 410 of Aegypten und Aegyptisches Leben im Altertum by Adolf Erman [Tübingen: 1923], revised by Hermann Ranke, 1977; published by Gerstenberg Verlag, Hildesheim.) Corrections made with the aid of photograph published on page 46 of Dictionary of Egyptian Civilization by George Posener (New York: Tudor Pub., 1959).
"Live always in my presence and be perfect," Yahweh told him, "so that I may set my covenant between myself and you and multiply your descendants." [Gen. 17:2] Instead of telling Abraham to sign on the dotted line in his steno pad to confirm the fertility contract, Yahweh told him to go circumcise himself! According to Genesis, Abraham never suspected he was dealing with a sex-crazed sicko who would have enjoyed kiddy porn if it had been invented at the time. Instead, we are told, he circumcised his thirteen-year-old son Ishmael, all the men and boys under his control, and then—at the age of ninety and nine!—he circumcised himself! Yahweh then told him, in effect, that all his male descendants and those of his fellow tribesmen forever would personally (how personal can you get?) have to renew this fertility contract on the eighth day after birth—by surrendering their foreskins. Just think! If typewriters and ballpoint pens had been available for producing contracts in the days of Abraham and Yahweh, circumcision might never have gotten started among the Jews!
Of course, not all the Jewish patriarchs were circumcised. Moses himself—the supposed inventor of Judaism—apparently was not circumcised, although his son was! The account of the circumcision of Moses' son is one of the strangest passages in the Old Testament. It is found in the fourth chapter of Exodus (Exod. 4:24-26), and is interpolated into the tale about Yahweh ordering Moses to return from Midian to Egypt. "During the journey," the New English Bible Version tells us,
while they were encamped for the night, the Lord met Moses, meaning to kill him, but Zipporah [Moses' wife] picked up a sharp flint, cut off her son's foreskin, and touched him with it, saying, "You are my blood-bridegroom." So the Lord let Moses alone. Then she said, "Blood-bridegroom by circumcision.”
Just what this utterly mad story may have meant to the compilers of Exodus we may never know. It does show, however, that there is magic in a bloody foreskin—magic so powerful that even Yahweh himself cannot withstand it. No wonder, given the nasty nature of their deity, that Jews to this very day circumcise their male children as soon as possible to protect them from a god who might try to kill them! (Actually, unless the child dies beforehand, circumcision is delayed until the eighth day. Dead infants too must be circumcised before burial, even though it is obvious that Yahweh's dirty work already has been done!)
Kosher Cuts
According to the Book of Joshua (Josh. 5:2-4), Yahweh ordered all penile mutilations to be done with a flint knife:
Stone Age tools for Stone Age practices! So "Joshua thereupon made knives of flint and circumcised the Israelites at Gebeath-haaraloth (Hill of Foreskins)." Edward Wallerstein, in his excellent book Circumcision: An American Health Fallacy, [Edward Wallerstein, "Jews and Circumcision" chap. 16 in Circumcision: An AmericanHealth Fallacy, New York: Springer, 1980] gives a most readable summary of the history of circumcision among the Jews, including modern Jewish practices. Before the Hellenic period (ca. 300 B.C.E.–l C.E.), Wallerstein claims, circumcision among the Jews consisted of simply lopping off the tip of the prepuce (foreskin) projecting beyond the head (glans) of the penis. Known as milah, this minimal mutilation had been practiced for nearly two millennia. But during the Hellenic period, many Jews tried to pass for pagans by trying to obliterate the evidence of sacred surgery. This they did by blistering the tip of the remainder of the foreskin in order to enlarge it. To prevent this, religious authorities decided that men had to "take it all off." Thus began the procedure known as periah. To aid in the removal of the entire foreskin, as it is being cut away with the ritual knife, the inner lining of the foreskin and the frenum are torn away from the glans by means of specially sharpened fingernails which the ritual surgeon (mohel) cultivates for just this purpose. So much for the notion that circumcision was really instituted for hygienic reasons!
In the Talmudic period (ca. 500-625 C.E.), according to Wallerstein, periah was supplemented by mezziza, which consists of moistening the lips with wine and then taking the bleeding penis into the mouth to suck the blood—the process being repeated several times, the blood being spit out into a special receptacle. Although the bloodsucking ritual has been outlawed by Jewish authorities in America and Europe, some of the more orthodox and backward Jews in the Near East and Africa still practice mezziza.
I cannot leave the topic of Jews and circumcision without mention of another rationale for the practice: producing foreskins to be used in lieu of money! According to the tale recorded in the eighteenth chapter of First Samuel, David wanted to marry Michal, the daughter of King Saul. David lacking money for the bride-price, Saul let it be known that he would settle for the foreskins of a hundred Philistines in lieu of coin of the realm. So,
David went out with his men and slew two hundred Philistines; he brought their foreskins and counted them out to the king in order to be accepted as his son-in-law. So Saul married his daughter Michal to David. (1Sam. 18:27)
It is interesting to note that there is some controversy among Hebrew scholars concerning the meaning of the word 'rloth--here rendered as "foreskins." According to Gesenius' Hebrew and English Lexicon, 'rlah (singular) can also have the meaning of membrum praeputiatum, i.e., the uncircumcised penis itself—and so some scholars claim that David actually paid in penises, not prepuces!
"Live always in my presence and be perfect," Yahweh told him, "so that I may set my covenant between myself and you and multiply your descendants." [Gen. 17:2] Instead of telling Abraham to sign on the dotted line in his steno pad to confirm the fertility contract, Yahweh told him to go circumcise himself! According to Genesis, Abraham never suspected he was dealing with a sex-crazed sicko who would have enjoyed kiddy porn if it had been invented at the time. Instead, we are told, he circumcised his thirteen-year-old son Ishmael, all the men and boys under his control, and then—at the age of ninety and nine!—he circumcised himself! Yahweh then told him, in effect, that all his male descendants and those of his fellow tribesmen forever would personally (how personal can you get?) have to renew this fertility contract on the eighth day after birth—by surrendering their foreskins. Just think! If typewriters and ballpoint pens had been available for producing contracts in the days of Abraham and Yahweh, circumcision might never have gotten started among the Jews!
Of course, not all the Jewish patriarchs were circumcised. Moses himself—the supposed inventor of Judaism—apparently was not circumcised, although his son was! The account of the circumcision of Moses' son is one of the strangest passages in the Old Testament. It is found in the fourth chapter of Exodus (Exod. 4:24-26), and is interpolated into the tale about Yahweh ordering Moses to return from Midian to Egypt. "During the journey," the New English Bible Version tells us,
while they were encamped for the night, the Lord met Moses, meaning to kill him, but Zipporah [Moses' wife] picked up a sharp flint, cut off her son's foreskin, and touched him with it, saying, "You are my blood-bridegroom." So the Lord let Moses alone. Then she said, "Blood-bridegroom by circumcision.”
Just what this utterly mad story may have meant to the compilers of Exodus we may never know. It does show, however, that there is magic in a bloody foreskin—magic so powerful that even Yahweh himself cannot withstand it. No wonder, given the nasty nature of their deity, that Jews to this very day circumcise their male children as soon as possible to protect them from a god who might try to kill them! (Actually, unless the child dies beforehand, circumcision is delayed until the eighth day. Dead infants too must be circumcised before burial, even though it is obvious that Yahweh's dirty work already has been done!)
Kosher Cuts
According to the Book of Joshua (Josh. 5:2-4), Yahweh ordered all penile mutilations to be done with a flint knife:
Stone Age tools for Stone Age practices! So "Joshua thereupon made knives of flint and circumcised the Israelites at Gebeath-haaraloth (Hill of Foreskins)." Edward Wallerstein, in his excellent book Circumcision: An American Health Fallacy, [Edward Wallerstein, "Jews and Circumcision" chap. 16 in Circumcision: An AmericanHealth Fallacy, New York: Springer, 1980] gives a most readable summary of the history of circumcision among the Jews, including modern Jewish practices. Before the Hellenic period (ca. 300 B.C.E.–l C.E.), Wallerstein claims, circumcision among the Jews consisted of simply lopping off the tip of the prepuce (foreskin) projecting beyond the head (glans) of the penis. Known as milah, this minimal mutilation had been practiced for nearly two millennia. But during the Hellenic period, many Jews tried to pass for pagans by trying to obliterate the evidence of sacred surgery. This they did by blistering the tip of the remainder of the foreskin in order to enlarge it. To prevent this, religious authorities decided that men had to "take it all off." Thus began the procedure known as periah. To aid in the removal of the entire foreskin, as it is being cut away with the ritual knife, the inner lining of the foreskin and the frenum are torn away from the glans by means of specially sharpened fingernails which the ritual surgeon (mohel) cultivates for just this purpose. So much for the notion that circumcision was really instituted for hygienic reasons!
In the Talmudic period (ca. 500-625 C.E.), according to Wallerstein, periah was supplemented by mezziza, which consists of moistening the lips with wine and then taking the bleeding penis into the mouth to suck the blood—the process being repeated several times, the blood being spit out into a special receptacle. Although the bloodsucking ritual has been outlawed by Jewish authorities in America and Europe, some of the more orthodox and backward Jews in the Near East and Africa still practice mezziza.
I cannot leave the topic of Jews and circumcision without mention of another rationale for the practice: producing foreskins to be used in lieu of money! According to the tale recorded in the eighteenth chapter of First Samuel, David wanted to marry Michal, the daughter of King Saul. David lacking money for the bride-price, Saul let it be known that he would settle for the foreskins of a hundred Philistines in lieu of coin of the realm. So,
David went out with his men and slew two hundred Philistines; he brought their foreskins and counted them out to the king in order to be accepted as his son-in-law. So Saul married his daughter Michal to David. (1Sam. 18:27)
It is interesting to note that there is some controversy among Hebrew scholars concerning the meaning of the word 'rloth--here rendered as "foreskins." According to Gesenius' Hebrew and English Lexicon, 'rlah (singular) can also have the meaning of membrum praeputiatum, i.e., the uncircumcised penis itself—and so some scholars claim that David actually paid in penises, not prepuces!
Figure 2. A representation of the penis of a native of Celebes with "Kambiong,"a rod which pierces the glans. Tied around the margin of the glans are the eyelids and eyelashes of a buck. (From Circumcision in Man and Woman by Felix Bryk [New York: American Ethnological Press, 1934].
Christianity: circumcision as a "feast"
It is a curious fact of cultural anthropology that Christians worship a god who belongs to a different religion. Even though Jesus today sits at the top of the Christian totem pole, the biblical Jesus is clearly a Jew. Like all Jewish males, we are told, Jesus was subjected to circumcision. How a being can be born supposedly perfect—indeed, be born the archetype of perfection—and still be in need of corrective surgery, is perhaps the most puzzling of all religious mysteries. The mystery deepens when we reflect that the Jewish rite of circumcision is allegedly the mark of a man's contract ("covenant") with a god he worships. With whom, we may ask, was Jesus covenanting, if he himself was the only god in town? Moreover, since the original meaning of the covenant was to increase a man's fertility and the number of his descendants, it is clear that whoever it was who made the contract with Jesus didn't honor the bargain. Jesus sired no children at all—at least, none that the pope will admit to! If an omniscient deity had been involved in the circumcision of Jesus, wouldn't it have known that circumcising Jesus to seal a sacred fertility contract would be as inappropriate as circumcising a eunuch?
Howsoever perplexing these questions might be, the Gospel of Luke says it is a fact that Jesus was circumcised. Despite the fact that St. Paul and his followers rejected circumcision as being unnecessary for Christians, since ancient times the Christian Church has celebrated the day of Jesus' genital truncation as a holy day--the "Feast" (!) of the Circumcision, celebrated on the first day of January.
The scriptural accounts of Jesus' resurrection and ascension into heaven make it impossible to infer very much about the condition of the body he piloted into outer space. For example, we do not know if he was launched with a full or empty bladder, whether or not his toenails needed clipping, how many milligrams of earwax he took along, how much mucus there was in his nasal passages, whether or not any spermatozoa remained in his seminal vesicles, or how much of the last supper remained to be evacuated from the colon.
We can, however, be sure that the penis he packed along was missing a part—the prepuce. If Jesus didn't take his foreskin with him to heaven, Christians reasoned, the sacred snippet must still be here on earth! And so quite a few legends and traditions have come down concerning the fate of the foreskin of god.
Christianity: circumcision as a "feast"
It is a curious fact of cultural anthropology that Christians worship a god who belongs to a different religion. Even though Jesus today sits at the top of the Christian totem pole, the biblical Jesus is clearly a Jew. Like all Jewish males, we are told, Jesus was subjected to circumcision. How a being can be born supposedly perfect—indeed, be born the archetype of perfection—and still be in need of corrective surgery, is perhaps the most puzzling of all religious mysteries. The mystery deepens when we reflect that the Jewish rite of circumcision is allegedly the mark of a man's contract ("covenant") with a god he worships. With whom, we may ask, was Jesus covenanting, if he himself was the only god in town? Moreover, since the original meaning of the covenant was to increase a man's fertility and the number of his descendants, it is clear that whoever it was who made the contract with Jesus didn't honor the bargain. Jesus sired no children at all—at least, none that the pope will admit to! If an omniscient deity had been involved in the circumcision of Jesus, wouldn't it have known that circumcising Jesus to seal a sacred fertility contract would be as inappropriate as circumcising a eunuch?
Howsoever perplexing these questions might be, the Gospel of Luke says it is a fact that Jesus was circumcised. Despite the fact that St. Paul and his followers rejected circumcision as being unnecessary for Christians, since ancient times the Christian Church has celebrated the day of Jesus' genital truncation as a holy day--the "Feast" (!) of the Circumcision, celebrated on the first day of January.
The scriptural accounts of Jesus' resurrection and ascension into heaven make it impossible to infer very much about the condition of the body he piloted into outer space. For example, we do not know if he was launched with a full or empty bladder, whether or not his toenails needed clipping, how many milligrams of earwax he took along, how much mucus there was in his nasal passages, whether or not any spermatozoa remained in his seminal vesicles, or how much of the last supper remained to be evacuated from the colon.
We can, however, be sure that the penis he packed along was missing a part—the prepuce. If Jesus didn't take his foreskin with him to heaven, Christians reasoned, the sacred snippet must still be here on earth! And so quite a few legends and traditions have come down concerning the fate of the foreskin of god.
Figure 3. Jesus undergoing corrective surgery. (From History of Circumcision by P. C. Remondino, M.D. [Philadelphia and London: E A. Davis, Publisher, 1891J; modeled after a sixteenth-century Italian print].
Legends mentioned by Wallerstein [Circumcision, pp.9-10] as having been believed by Christians include the ideas that the Virgin Mary carried the foreskin on her person, that the penile paring had been entrusted to St. John or Mary Magdalene, that the Apostles inherited it, that it was brought to Charlemagne, that it was stolen by Charles V in 1527, and that the divine deciduum once appeared simultaneously in twelve abbeys across the continent of Europe. It was claimed, Wallerstein tells us, that "the relic emitted a wonderful odor which had a strange effect upon women." Perhaps as an example of such "strange effects," some nuns were alleged to have engaged in "insolent conduct" with the relic.
The prepuce of piety was also of importance to several female saints. St. Birgitta claimed to have had a vision of the Mother of God holding the foreskin in her hand, and St. Agnes of Blannbekin went berserk every January 1, when she would have visions of herself swallowing the only earthly remnant of her lord.
Lest it be thought that only the rude and ignorant believed in such nonsense, we may note that one of England's kings fell prey to the allure of the priapal paring:
At some remote period—in the thirteenth or fourteenth century—the abbey church of Coulombs, in the diocese of Chartres, in France, became possessed in some miraculous manner of the holy prepuce. This holy relic had the power of rendering all the sterile women in the neighborhood fruitful,—a virtue, we are told, which filled the benevolent monks of the abbey with a pardonable amount of pride. It had the additional virtue of inducing a subsequent easy delivery, which also added to the reputation and pardonable vanity of the good monks ... The royal spouse of good and valiant King Henry V—he of Agincourt, whom England waded up to its knees in the sea at Dover to meet on his return from that campaign—had followed the example of all good dames and was about to give England an heir. Henry then governed a good part of France. Having heard of the wonderful efficacy of the relic at Coulombs, he early one morning threw the good monks into consternation by the arrival at the convent gate of a duly equipped herald and messenger from his kingship, asking for the loan of the relic with about as much ceremony as Mrs. Jones would ask for the loan of a flat-iron or saucepan from her neighbor, Mrs. Smith. The queen, Catherine of France, was of their own country and Henry was too powerful to be put off or refused; there was no room for evasion, as the holy prepuce could not be duplicated; so the poor monks with the greatest reluctance parted with their precious relic, entrusting it into the hands of the royal envoy, which wended its way to London, where it in due time, being touched by the queen, insured a safe delivery. Honest Henry then returned the relic to France ... [but] a full period of twenty-five years occurred before the monks of Coulombs again regained possession of their prize, during which period the population of the neighborhood must have suffered from the natural increase of sterility and the . . . increased difficulty and complications of labor induced by the absence of the relic. On its return, the relic was found to have lost none of its virtues. . . . In 1870, when the writer was in France, it was still working its miracles. Balzac found ample facts to found his famous "Droll Stories" without straining his imagination. [P.C. Remondino, M.D., History of Circumcision from the Earliest Times to the Present (Philadelphia & London: F. A. Davis, Publisher, l891), pp. 70–72]
Circumcision and health
It is claimed that circumcision of the male brings with it a host of hygienic benefits—the most important of which, it would appear, is that it allows men to bathe more rapidly. In addition to that benefit, circumcision is supposed to reduce the incidence of venereal disease, prevent a variety of cancers, cure premature ejaculation, and inhibit—if not stop entirely—the wicked practice of "solitary vice." Almost every person I talk with on the subject of circumcision "knows" that the wives of circumcised men have a lower incidence of cervical cancer. Although they find the idea of sexual mutilation repugnant, most people conclude that a foreskin is a small price for men to pay in exchange for the salvation of their lovers. I too believed this bit of folk wisdom until just a few months ago, when I read Edward Wallerstein's book, Circumcision: An American Health Fallacy. Much to my astonishment, I discovered that most "research" on the subject of circumcision is on par with that done by "creation scientists." Space permits me only to review Wallerstein's analysis of the "evidence" on circumcision and cervical cancer. ["Circumcision and Cancer," chap. 10 in Circumcision, pp. 88-114]
It appears to be a fact that the incidence of cervical uterine cancer is lower in Jewish women than in other women, despite the fact (as Wallerstein shows) that pro-circumcision researchers have greatly inflated the rate of cervical cancer among Gentiles and covered up the fact that cervical cancer does occur in Jews. Why is this?
The first idea which comes to many minds is the fact that almost all husbands of Jewish women are circumcised. (The fact that in America the vast majority of all husbands are circumcised does not often spring to mind.) There must be some aspect of the uncircumcised penis which is associated with cancer. The working hypothesis—which was rapidly elevated to the status of a "fact"—was that smegma (a cheesy secretion produced beneath the foreskin) was a carcinogen. The notion that smegma is a carcinogen persists to the present, despite the fact that careful studies have failed to show that smegma can induce genital cancers in experimental animals. The only apparent exception to this statement is to be found in a study done by Plaut and Kohn-Speyer in 1947 at the Beth Israel Hospital in New York City. [Alfred Plaut and Alice C. Kohn-Speyer, "The Carcinogenic Action of Smegma," Science, vol. 105, no. 2728 (April 11, 1947): p. 392] In the conclusion of their paper the authors commented:
Provided our results can be duplicated and improved, this may be the first experimental production of cancer by external application of an external product of the animal body.
Wallerstein's critique of this paper [Circumcision, pp. 97–98] is devastating and shows why the results have never been duplicated:
The study employed horse smegma as the test substance and cerumen (earwax) for control. A buried skin tunnel was made midline in the back of mice, and the test or control substance was inserted into the tunnel. Of the 800 experimental animals, 250 died before the experiment was concluded and were not included in the test results. No cause was given for the premature death of 31% of the sample. The skin tunnel broke down in "approximately 40%" of the remaining animals. In such cases the test or control substance was injected under the skin. At the conclusion of the experiment, 53% of the test and 53% of the control animals were "available" for examination for evidence of cancer. No reason was given to explain why 47% of the sample (test and control) were unavailable for the examination. The researchers found a variety of tumors ... in 30% of the test and 15% of the control animals examined. Longevity was carefully monitored.
Among Wallerstein's criticisms of this experiment are the following:
The study is invalid in its conceptualization and research design. No animal deposits smegma in coitus via an artificially created mid-back skin tunnel. [Wallerstein curiously neglects to criticize the fact that in some cases the smegma was injected under the skin!] What serious conclusions can be drawn from an experiment in which: 31% of the animals died before the experiment was concluded; 40% of the skin tunnels broke down; 47% of the test or control animals were not investigated for tumors? Strangely, the survival rate for smegma-treated animals was much higher than for the control group. No conjecture was made to explain this phenomenon; perhaps it can now be claimed that smegma injections increase longevity!
So much for smegma. But what about the lower rates of cervical cancer among Jewish women? If it is the circumcision status of their husbands that is the deciding factor, then it should be true that cervical cancer rates should be low also among Gentile women married to circumcised men. One study often cited as proof that this is indeed true is the 1954 study done by E. L. Wynder et al.[E. L. Wynder et al., “A Study of Environmental Factors in Carcinoma of the Cervix," American Journal of Obstetrics and Gynecology, vol. 68, no. 4 (October 1954): pp. 1016–1046] —despite the authors' caution that Epidermoid cancer of the cervix has been noted in women exposed only to circumcised males and in virgins. Other etiological factors must therefore exist.
How does this study stand up against critical scrutiny? Is there really a link between male circumcision status and female cervical cancer rates? The Achilles heel of the study, it turns out, is the fact that the circumcision status of husbands was determined not by direct examination, but by asking the wives! In screening women to be studied, the authors discovered that 10 percent of White women and 30 percent of Black women were unable to state the circumcision status of their husbands. Could there have been errors in the diagnoses given by the women who claimed they did know the circumcision status of their husbands? Indeed, there could have been, according to Wallerstein, who cites one study showing that 50 percent of women's statements as to the circumcision status of their husbands were in error, and another study which showed the men to be wrong about their own status! Other studies have failed to find a correlation between circumcision status of husbands and cancer rates in wives. It is amusing to note that researchers generally forget to check the circumcision status of women's lovers, and to find out what kinds of contraceptive techniques (if any) are employed. The fact that condoms would prevent the deposition of smegma upon the cervix and the fact that "the pill" would not ought to be relevant!
Although many claims have been made in support of the notion that circumcision has hygienic value (see sidebar at end), I have been unable to find any that are supportable by hard facts. Space limitations require us to conclude this section by quoting the 1978 declaration of The American College of Obstetricians and Gynecologists on the subject of neonatal circumcision:
The American College of Obstetricians and Gynecologists supports the position of the American Academy of Pediatrics ad hoc Task Force on Circumcision (1975) that "there is no absolute medical indication for routine circumcision of the newborn." [Cited in Wallerstein. Circumcision, p. 218]
What's sauce for the gander is...
It would be surprising if the genital mutilations practiced upon the human male did not have their counterpart in the human female. Not only is this true in the case of circumcision, it is true with a vengeance. Although true circumcision (excision of the hood or foreskin covering the clitoris) does exist and is extolled in the pages of Playgirl magazine, it is rare for cutting to stop with removal of the foreskin. In the vast majority of cases of female "circumcision" around the world, part or all of the clitoris itself is removed (clitoridotomy or clitoridectomy). In 1976, according to Fran P. Hosken, [Fran P. Hosken, "Female Circumcision in Africa," Women and Health, vol. 1, no. 6 (December 1976)], twenty to twenty-five million women in Africa alone had been subjected to clitoridectomy. The mutilation of these women was one of the "benefits" of their being born into a Moslem society. Although the Koran nowhere requires female "circumcision," the practice is rare in other religions, and is taken for granted in many Moslem societies in Africa. It is reported that clitoridectomy was practiced by the ancient Egyptians and Jews as well. The practice is increasing in the United States, due to the increasing numbers of Black Muslims. I have been unable, however, to find reliable estimates of how many American women have been subjected to this outrage.
Unlike male circumcision, which is most often performed under the aseptic conditions of hospitals these days, removal of the clitoris is very often done under unhygienic, grisly conditions by nonmedical practitioners. Worse yet, the surgery performed may not stop with removal of the clitoris! In so-called Pharaonic circumcision and infibulation, the small and/or large labia are also removed, and the genital area is stitched together to block entry to the vagina. A partial description of this procedure, as it is performed in Somalia, was given by Jacques Lantier: [Jacques Lantier. La Cite Magique et Magie en AfriqueNoire (Paris: Libraire A. Fayand 1972), p. 226, Quoted in Wallerstein, Circumcision, p. 166].
After separating outer and inner lips (labia majora and labia minora) with her fingers, the old woman attaches them with large thorns onto the flesh of each thigh. With her kitchen knife the woman then pierces and slices open the hood of the clitoris and then begins to cut it out. While another woman wipes off the blood with a rag, the woman (or operator) digs with her fingernail a hole the length of the clitoris to detach and pullout that organ. The little girl screams in extreme pain, but no one pays the slightest attention.
The woman finishes the job by entirely pulling out the clitoris and then cuts it to the bone with the kitchen knife. Her helpers again wipe off the spurting blood with a rag. The woman then lifts up the skin that is left with her thumb and index finger to remove the remaining flesh. She then digs a deep hole amidst the gushing blood. The neighbor women who take part in the operation then plunge their fingers into the bloody hole to verify that every remnant of the clitoris is removed.
After printing the above quotation, it seems hardly necessary to state that the practice of Pharaonic "circumcision" is a Stone Age outrage surviving in the twentieth century, or that the practice should be stopped. It is clear that clitoridectomy is performed solely for the sexual repression of women. It is sometimes claimed that it is performed to prevent masturbation and to prevent women from "straying" from their husbands—if they get no pleasure from sex, the reasoning goes, they won't go out looking for it. I am happy to report that efforts are being made to halt this ne plus ultra of sexual abuse. Fran Hosken, mentioned previously, is waging an increasingly effective war on the practice of female genital mutilation. To spread her message worldwide, she publishes The Women's International Network (WIN) News. [Available from 187 Grant St., Lexington, MA 02173]
In recent months, Pharaonic circumcision and infibulation have become subjects of worldwide concern not only for reasons of ordinary humanitarian concern. Some preliminary information from Africa indicates that there may be a link between these practices and the heterosexual transmission of AIDS. It is thought that the frequent occurrence of bleeding during intercourse with sexually mutilated women makes it easier for the AIDS virus to gain entry to their bodies. It has been claimed that the incidence of AIDS is much greater among circumcised women than among their uncircumcised peers. If subsequent studies bear out these reports, it will be a most ironic turn of events.
While we shrink instinctively from the thought of Pharaonic circumcision and infibulation, not everyone is repulsed by the idea of female circumcision in its narrowest sense—the removal of the hood or foreskin of the clitoris. In fact, as articles in Playgirl and Cosmopolitan magazines have demonstrated, surprising numbers of sophisticated American women are clamoring to have it done! The reason is that the operation, by baring the sensitive surface of the clitoris, allegedly makes a woman sexually more responsive, more capable of enjoying sexual stimulation during intercourse. The operation is offered as a cure for "frigidity," a method to make "non-orgasmic women" capable of experiencing orgasm. Unfortunately, the operation is about as successful in making women "orgasmic" as is male circumcision in preventing cervical cancer. It seems to be yet one more method surgeons have devised for performing walletectomy. Circumcision, whether of the male or of the female, I believe to be a Stone Age practice surviving in the Steel Age. Like the religious ideas which spawned it, it has no place in the modern world. The literature on circumcision, both male and female, is vast but generally of low quality as science. A great deal of it is on par with creationist "research." Like creationist researchers, who start with the required conclusions and then try to find supporting evidence, it would appear that many pro-circumcision authors "know" before they start that circumcision is a good thing. All they need to do is sift through data and retain those that support their thesis. Data that do not fit or contradict the thesis are ignored. After having read quite a number of authors dealing with circumcision, I find that the only one I can agree with almost completely is Edward Wallerstein. It seems appropriate, therefore, to end this article with the paragraph which ends his book, Circumcision: An American Health Fallacy:
Today circumcision is a solution in search of a problem.The operation, as prophylaxis, has no place in a rational society. The final conclusion to be drawn is that routine infant health circumcision is archaic, useless, potentially dangerous, and therefore should cease. [Wallerstein, Circumcision, p. 197].
CIRCUMCISION SIDEBAR
Waffling by the American Academy of Pediatrics
In 1971, the American Academy of Pediatrics’ Committee on the Fetus and Newborn declared that “there are no valid medical indications for circumcision in the neonatal period.” In 1975, an ad hoc task force of the same committee concluded that “there is no absolute medical indication for routine circumcision of the newborn.” This view has been reiterated by both the American Academy of Pediatrics and the American College of Obstetrics and Gynecology.
In March of 1989, however, newspapers around the country published sensational articles with titles such as “Baby Doctors Decide Circumcision Has Benefits,” and “Circumcision: Clear Benefits, Some Risks.” The implication of most articles was that the American Academy of Pediatrics had reversed itself on the issue of circumcision and now was advocating the practice, on the grounds that it had definite prophylactic value against a variety of diseases, ranging from cancer of the penis and sexually transmitted diseases to urinary tract infections and cervical cancer.
Study of the actual “Report of the Task Force on Circumcision,” which was published in August of 1989, (Pediatrics, vol. 84, no. 4, [1989]: pp. 388-391) however, makes the supposed reversal in the Academy’s opinion rather less than clear-cut. With regard to the question of circumcision decreasing the incidence of penile cancer, for instance, after citing statistics seeming to indicate a greater risk among uncircumcised men, the report nevertheless states that “factors other than circumcision are important in the etiology of penile cancer. The incidence of penile cancer is related to hygiene.”
Almost all newspaper accounts of the Academy’s report trumpeted the “statistic” that uncircumcised infants had ten-fold more urinary tract infections than did circumcised babies. In the Academy report, however, this and other “statistics” having the same import were rather seriously called into question. One study, for instance, failed to distinguish between “primary urinary tract infections” (which conceivably could relate to circumcision status) and “bacteriuria secondary to septicemia” (urinary infections resulting from bacteria getting into the bloodstream by any means whatever). Many of the studies analyzed were carried out in army hospitals, and the Academy warns that “these studies…are retrospective in design and may have methodologic flaws. For example, they do not include all boys born in any single cohort or those treated as outpatients, so the study population may have been influenced by selection bias.”
On the subject of sexually transmitted diseases, the Academy’s appraisal is no more definite: “Although published reports suggest that chancroid, syphilis, human papillomavirus, and herpes simplex virus type 2 infection are more frequent in uncircumcised men, methodologic problems render these reports inconclusive.” As for the thesis that uncircumcised men are more likely to transmit cervical cancer-inducing papillomavirus to their lovers, the Academy states that “evidence linking uncircumcised men to cervical carcinoma is inconclusive. The strongest predisposing factors in cervical cancer are a history of intercourse at an early age and multiple sexual partners. The disease is virtually unknown in nuns and virgins.”
The Academy is now of the opinion that if circumcision is performed, it should be done with local anesthesia. Unfortunately, “reported experience with local anesthesia in newborn circumcision is limited, and the procedure is not without risk…even a small dose of lidocaine can result in blood levels high enough to produce measurable systemic responses in neonates.” The task force’s report concludes on a note of fuzzy ambiguity:
Newborn circumcision has potential medical benefits and advantages as well as disadvantages and risks. When circumcision is being considered, the benefits and risks should be explained to the parents and informed consent obtained. (Emphasis added)
It thus appears that the evidence favoring circumcision as a preventive for various diseases is “underwhelming” at best. The American Academy of Pediatrics has not clearly reversed its earlier opinion on the inutility of neonatal circumcision. It has not reported that medical science should return to the practices of the Stone Age.
Legends mentioned by Wallerstein [Circumcision, pp.9-10] as having been believed by Christians include the ideas that the Virgin Mary carried the foreskin on her person, that the penile paring had been entrusted to St. John or Mary Magdalene, that the Apostles inherited it, that it was brought to Charlemagne, that it was stolen by Charles V in 1527, and that the divine deciduum once appeared simultaneously in twelve abbeys across the continent of Europe. It was claimed, Wallerstein tells us, that "the relic emitted a wonderful odor which had a strange effect upon women." Perhaps as an example of such "strange effects," some nuns were alleged to have engaged in "insolent conduct" with the relic.
The prepuce of piety was also of importance to several female saints. St. Birgitta claimed to have had a vision of the Mother of God holding the foreskin in her hand, and St. Agnes of Blannbekin went berserk every January 1, when she would have visions of herself swallowing the only earthly remnant of her lord.
Lest it be thought that only the rude and ignorant believed in such nonsense, we may note that one of England's kings fell prey to the allure of the priapal paring:
At some remote period—in the thirteenth or fourteenth century—the abbey church of Coulombs, in the diocese of Chartres, in France, became possessed in some miraculous manner of the holy prepuce. This holy relic had the power of rendering all the sterile women in the neighborhood fruitful,—a virtue, we are told, which filled the benevolent monks of the abbey with a pardonable amount of pride. It had the additional virtue of inducing a subsequent easy delivery, which also added to the reputation and pardonable vanity of the good monks ... The royal spouse of good and valiant King Henry V—he of Agincourt, whom England waded up to its knees in the sea at Dover to meet on his return from that campaign—had followed the example of all good dames and was about to give England an heir. Henry then governed a good part of France. Having heard of the wonderful efficacy of the relic at Coulombs, he early one morning threw the good monks into consternation by the arrival at the convent gate of a duly equipped herald and messenger from his kingship, asking for the loan of the relic with about as much ceremony as Mrs. Jones would ask for the loan of a flat-iron or saucepan from her neighbor, Mrs. Smith. The queen, Catherine of France, was of their own country and Henry was too powerful to be put off or refused; there was no room for evasion, as the holy prepuce could not be duplicated; so the poor monks with the greatest reluctance parted with their precious relic, entrusting it into the hands of the royal envoy, which wended its way to London, where it in due time, being touched by the queen, insured a safe delivery. Honest Henry then returned the relic to France ... [but] a full period of twenty-five years occurred before the monks of Coulombs again regained possession of their prize, during which period the population of the neighborhood must have suffered from the natural increase of sterility and the . . . increased difficulty and complications of labor induced by the absence of the relic. On its return, the relic was found to have lost none of its virtues. . . . In 1870, when the writer was in France, it was still working its miracles. Balzac found ample facts to found his famous "Droll Stories" without straining his imagination. [P.C. Remondino, M.D., History of Circumcision from the Earliest Times to the Present (Philadelphia & London: F. A. Davis, Publisher, l891), pp. 70–72]
Circumcision and health
It is claimed that circumcision of the male brings with it a host of hygienic benefits—the most important of which, it would appear, is that it allows men to bathe more rapidly. In addition to that benefit, circumcision is supposed to reduce the incidence of venereal disease, prevent a variety of cancers, cure premature ejaculation, and inhibit—if not stop entirely—the wicked practice of "solitary vice." Almost every person I talk with on the subject of circumcision "knows" that the wives of circumcised men have a lower incidence of cervical cancer. Although they find the idea of sexual mutilation repugnant, most people conclude that a foreskin is a small price for men to pay in exchange for the salvation of their lovers. I too believed this bit of folk wisdom until just a few months ago, when I read Edward Wallerstein's book, Circumcision: An American Health Fallacy. Much to my astonishment, I discovered that most "research" on the subject of circumcision is on par with that done by "creation scientists." Space permits me only to review Wallerstein's analysis of the "evidence" on circumcision and cervical cancer. ["Circumcision and Cancer," chap. 10 in Circumcision, pp. 88-114]
It appears to be a fact that the incidence of cervical uterine cancer is lower in Jewish women than in other women, despite the fact (as Wallerstein shows) that pro-circumcision researchers have greatly inflated the rate of cervical cancer among Gentiles and covered up the fact that cervical cancer does occur in Jews. Why is this?
The first idea which comes to many minds is the fact that almost all husbands of Jewish women are circumcised. (The fact that in America the vast majority of all husbands are circumcised does not often spring to mind.) There must be some aspect of the uncircumcised penis which is associated with cancer. The working hypothesis—which was rapidly elevated to the status of a "fact"—was that smegma (a cheesy secretion produced beneath the foreskin) was a carcinogen. The notion that smegma is a carcinogen persists to the present, despite the fact that careful studies have failed to show that smegma can induce genital cancers in experimental animals. The only apparent exception to this statement is to be found in a study done by Plaut and Kohn-Speyer in 1947 at the Beth Israel Hospital in New York City. [Alfred Plaut and Alice C. Kohn-Speyer, "The Carcinogenic Action of Smegma," Science, vol. 105, no. 2728 (April 11, 1947): p. 392] In the conclusion of their paper the authors commented:
Provided our results can be duplicated and improved, this may be the first experimental production of cancer by external application of an external product of the animal body.
Wallerstein's critique of this paper [Circumcision, pp. 97–98] is devastating and shows why the results have never been duplicated:
The study employed horse smegma as the test substance and cerumen (earwax) for control. A buried skin tunnel was made midline in the back of mice, and the test or control substance was inserted into the tunnel. Of the 800 experimental animals, 250 died before the experiment was concluded and were not included in the test results. No cause was given for the premature death of 31% of the sample. The skin tunnel broke down in "approximately 40%" of the remaining animals. In such cases the test or control substance was injected under the skin. At the conclusion of the experiment, 53% of the test and 53% of the control animals were "available" for examination for evidence of cancer. No reason was given to explain why 47% of the sample (test and control) were unavailable for the examination. The researchers found a variety of tumors ... in 30% of the test and 15% of the control animals examined. Longevity was carefully monitored.
Among Wallerstein's criticisms of this experiment are the following:
The study is invalid in its conceptualization and research design. No animal deposits smegma in coitus via an artificially created mid-back skin tunnel. [Wallerstein curiously neglects to criticize the fact that in some cases the smegma was injected under the skin!] What serious conclusions can be drawn from an experiment in which: 31% of the animals died before the experiment was concluded; 40% of the skin tunnels broke down; 47% of the test or control animals were not investigated for tumors? Strangely, the survival rate for smegma-treated animals was much higher than for the control group. No conjecture was made to explain this phenomenon; perhaps it can now be claimed that smegma injections increase longevity!
So much for smegma. But what about the lower rates of cervical cancer among Jewish women? If it is the circumcision status of their husbands that is the deciding factor, then it should be true that cervical cancer rates should be low also among Gentile women married to circumcised men. One study often cited as proof that this is indeed true is the 1954 study done by E. L. Wynder et al.[E. L. Wynder et al., “A Study of Environmental Factors in Carcinoma of the Cervix," American Journal of Obstetrics and Gynecology, vol. 68, no. 4 (October 1954): pp. 1016–1046] —despite the authors' caution that Epidermoid cancer of the cervix has been noted in women exposed only to circumcised males and in virgins. Other etiological factors must therefore exist.
How does this study stand up against critical scrutiny? Is there really a link between male circumcision status and female cervical cancer rates? The Achilles heel of the study, it turns out, is the fact that the circumcision status of husbands was determined not by direct examination, but by asking the wives! In screening women to be studied, the authors discovered that 10 percent of White women and 30 percent of Black women were unable to state the circumcision status of their husbands. Could there have been errors in the diagnoses given by the women who claimed they did know the circumcision status of their husbands? Indeed, there could have been, according to Wallerstein, who cites one study showing that 50 percent of women's statements as to the circumcision status of their husbands were in error, and another study which showed the men to be wrong about their own status! Other studies have failed to find a correlation between circumcision status of husbands and cancer rates in wives. It is amusing to note that researchers generally forget to check the circumcision status of women's lovers, and to find out what kinds of contraceptive techniques (if any) are employed. The fact that condoms would prevent the deposition of smegma upon the cervix and the fact that "the pill" would not ought to be relevant!
Although many claims have been made in support of the notion that circumcision has hygienic value (see sidebar at end), I have been unable to find any that are supportable by hard facts. Space limitations require us to conclude this section by quoting the 1978 declaration of The American College of Obstetricians and Gynecologists on the subject of neonatal circumcision:
The American College of Obstetricians and Gynecologists supports the position of the American Academy of Pediatrics ad hoc Task Force on Circumcision (1975) that "there is no absolute medical indication for routine circumcision of the newborn." [Cited in Wallerstein. Circumcision, p. 218]
What's sauce for the gander is...
It would be surprising if the genital mutilations practiced upon the human male did not have their counterpart in the human female. Not only is this true in the case of circumcision, it is true with a vengeance. Although true circumcision (excision of the hood or foreskin covering the clitoris) does exist and is extolled in the pages of Playgirl magazine, it is rare for cutting to stop with removal of the foreskin. In the vast majority of cases of female "circumcision" around the world, part or all of the clitoris itself is removed (clitoridotomy or clitoridectomy). In 1976, according to Fran P. Hosken, [Fran P. Hosken, "Female Circumcision in Africa," Women and Health, vol. 1, no. 6 (December 1976)], twenty to twenty-five million women in Africa alone had been subjected to clitoridectomy. The mutilation of these women was one of the "benefits" of their being born into a Moslem society. Although the Koran nowhere requires female "circumcision," the practice is rare in other religions, and is taken for granted in many Moslem societies in Africa. It is reported that clitoridectomy was practiced by the ancient Egyptians and Jews as well. The practice is increasing in the United States, due to the increasing numbers of Black Muslims. I have been unable, however, to find reliable estimates of how many American women have been subjected to this outrage.
Unlike male circumcision, which is most often performed under the aseptic conditions of hospitals these days, removal of the clitoris is very often done under unhygienic, grisly conditions by nonmedical practitioners. Worse yet, the surgery performed may not stop with removal of the clitoris! In so-called Pharaonic circumcision and infibulation, the small and/or large labia are also removed, and the genital area is stitched together to block entry to the vagina. A partial description of this procedure, as it is performed in Somalia, was given by Jacques Lantier: [Jacques Lantier. La Cite Magique et Magie en AfriqueNoire (Paris: Libraire A. Fayand 1972), p. 226, Quoted in Wallerstein, Circumcision, p. 166].
After separating outer and inner lips (labia majora and labia minora) with her fingers, the old woman attaches them with large thorns onto the flesh of each thigh. With her kitchen knife the woman then pierces and slices open the hood of the clitoris and then begins to cut it out. While another woman wipes off the blood with a rag, the woman (or operator) digs with her fingernail a hole the length of the clitoris to detach and pullout that organ. The little girl screams in extreme pain, but no one pays the slightest attention.
The woman finishes the job by entirely pulling out the clitoris and then cuts it to the bone with the kitchen knife. Her helpers again wipe off the spurting blood with a rag. The woman then lifts up the skin that is left with her thumb and index finger to remove the remaining flesh. She then digs a deep hole amidst the gushing blood. The neighbor women who take part in the operation then plunge their fingers into the bloody hole to verify that every remnant of the clitoris is removed.
After printing the above quotation, it seems hardly necessary to state that the practice of Pharaonic "circumcision" is a Stone Age outrage surviving in the twentieth century, or that the practice should be stopped. It is clear that clitoridectomy is performed solely for the sexual repression of women. It is sometimes claimed that it is performed to prevent masturbation and to prevent women from "straying" from their husbands—if they get no pleasure from sex, the reasoning goes, they won't go out looking for it. I am happy to report that efforts are being made to halt this ne plus ultra of sexual abuse. Fran Hosken, mentioned previously, is waging an increasingly effective war on the practice of female genital mutilation. To spread her message worldwide, she publishes The Women's International Network (WIN) News. [Available from 187 Grant St., Lexington, MA 02173]
In recent months, Pharaonic circumcision and infibulation have become subjects of worldwide concern not only for reasons of ordinary humanitarian concern. Some preliminary information from Africa indicates that there may be a link between these practices and the heterosexual transmission of AIDS. It is thought that the frequent occurrence of bleeding during intercourse with sexually mutilated women makes it easier for the AIDS virus to gain entry to their bodies. It has been claimed that the incidence of AIDS is much greater among circumcised women than among their uncircumcised peers. If subsequent studies bear out these reports, it will be a most ironic turn of events.
While we shrink instinctively from the thought of Pharaonic circumcision and infibulation, not everyone is repulsed by the idea of female circumcision in its narrowest sense—the removal of the hood or foreskin of the clitoris. In fact, as articles in Playgirl and Cosmopolitan magazines have demonstrated, surprising numbers of sophisticated American women are clamoring to have it done! The reason is that the operation, by baring the sensitive surface of the clitoris, allegedly makes a woman sexually more responsive, more capable of enjoying sexual stimulation during intercourse. The operation is offered as a cure for "frigidity," a method to make "non-orgasmic women" capable of experiencing orgasm. Unfortunately, the operation is about as successful in making women "orgasmic" as is male circumcision in preventing cervical cancer. It seems to be yet one more method surgeons have devised for performing walletectomy. Circumcision, whether of the male or of the female, I believe to be a Stone Age practice surviving in the Steel Age. Like the religious ideas which spawned it, it has no place in the modern world. The literature on circumcision, both male and female, is vast but generally of low quality as science. A great deal of it is on par with creationist "research." Like creationist researchers, who start with the required conclusions and then try to find supporting evidence, it would appear that many pro-circumcision authors "know" before they start that circumcision is a good thing. All they need to do is sift through data and retain those that support their thesis. Data that do not fit or contradict the thesis are ignored. After having read quite a number of authors dealing with circumcision, I find that the only one I can agree with almost completely is Edward Wallerstein. It seems appropriate, therefore, to end this article with the paragraph which ends his book, Circumcision: An American Health Fallacy:
Today circumcision is a solution in search of a problem.The operation, as prophylaxis, has no place in a rational society. The final conclusion to be drawn is that routine infant health circumcision is archaic, useless, potentially dangerous, and therefore should cease. [Wallerstein, Circumcision, p. 197].
CIRCUMCISION SIDEBAR
Waffling by the American Academy of Pediatrics
In 1971, the American Academy of Pediatrics’ Committee on the Fetus and Newborn declared that “there are no valid medical indications for circumcision in the neonatal period.” In 1975, an ad hoc task force of the same committee concluded that “there is no absolute medical indication for routine circumcision of the newborn.” This view has been reiterated by both the American Academy of Pediatrics and the American College of Obstetrics and Gynecology.
In March of 1989, however, newspapers around the country published sensational articles with titles such as “Baby Doctors Decide Circumcision Has Benefits,” and “Circumcision: Clear Benefits, Some Risks.” The implication of most articles was that the American Academy of Pediatrics had reversed itself on the issue of circumcision and now was advocating the practice, on the grounds that it had definite prophylactic value against a variety of diseases, ranging from cancer of the penis and sexually transmitted diseases to urinary tract infections and cervical cancer.
Study of the actual “Report of the Task Force on Circumcision,” which was published in August of 1989, (Pediatrics, vol. 84, no. 4, [1989]: pp. 388-391) however, makes the supposed reversal in the Academy’s opinion rather less than clear-cut. With regard to the question of circumcision decreasing the incidence of penile cancer, for instance, after citing statistics seeming to indicate a greater risk among uncircumcised men, the report nevertheless states that “factors other than circumcision are important in the etiology of penile cancer. The incidence of penile cancer is related to hygiene.”
Almost all newspaper accounts of the Academy’s report trumpeted the “statistic” that uncircumcised infants had ten-fold more urinary tract infections than did circumcised babies. In the Academy report, however, this and other “statistics” having the same import were rather seriously called into question. One study, for instance, failed to distinguish between “primary urinary tract infections” (which conceivably could relate to circumcision status) and “bacteriuria secondary to septicemia” (urinary infections resulting from bacteria getting into the bloodstream by any means whatever). Many of the studies analyzed were carried out in army hospitals, and the Academy warns that “these studies…are retrospective in design and may have methodologic flaws. For example, they do not include all boys born in any single cohort or those treated as outpatients, so the study population may have been influenced by selection bias.”
On the subject of sexually transmitted diseases, the Academy’s appraisal is no more definite: “Although published reports suggest that chancroid, syphilis, human papillomavirus, and herpes simplex virus type 2 infection are more frequent in uncircumcised men, methodologic problems render these reports inconclusive.” As for the thesis that uncircumcised men are more likely to transmit cervical cancer-inducing papillomavirus to their lovers, the Academy states that “evidence linking uncircumcised men to cervical carcinoma is inconclusive. The strongest predisposing factors in cervical cancer are a history of intercourse at an early age and multiple sexual partners. The disease is virtually unknown in nuns and virgins.”
The Academy is now of the opinion that if circumcision is performed, it should be done with local anesthesia. Unfortunately, “reported experience with local anesthesia in newborn circumcision is limited, and the procedure is not without risk…even a small dose of lidocaine can result in blood levels high enough to produce measurable systemic responses in neonates.” The task force’s report concludes on a note of fuzzy ambiguity:
Newborn circumcision has potential medical benefits and advantages as well as disadvantages and risks. When circumcision is being considered, the benefits and risks should be explained to the parents and informed consent obtained. (Emphasis added)
It thus appears that the evidence favoring circumcision as a preventive for various diseases is “underwhelming” at best. The American Academy of Pediatrics has not clearly reversed its earlier opinion on the inutility of neonatal circumcision. It has not reported that medical science should return to the practices of the Stone Age.