Why I Chose to Cut My Boy

Recently, there has been a lot of go 'round in the media about parents circumcising their boys. It all started in March of 2011 when San Francisco decided to BAN a parent's right to choose whether or not they could cut their little boys and hippies and others alike rejoiced and said, "LET them STAY the way they were BORN! Stop the useless CUTTING on the village children!". Or something like that.

Anyhow, October 1st, 2011 we made the decision to cast aside the risks and get our newborn baby's penis cut.

It wasn't an easy decision. I did research. Research that is finally making its way back into the media. You see, I read a preliminary study that said that boys and men who are circumcised have a MUCH less chance of contracting HIV. More about that later.

I'm not really into hurting babies or potentially harming them. However, when something can be done that could potentially save the life of my child (or seriously impact their quality of life), I take note and weigh the risks. My husband and I have done the same thing with vaccines.

The vaccines were an easy sell for me. About 10 weeks into my pregnancy with The Baby, my husband caught the whooping cough and gave it to me. We were both so violently sick with cough that we both thought we would die. We both thanked GOD it had not been the following year when we would have had a baby infant. That showed me how important it was to get vaccines. There's a reason why those illnesses need vaccines and I didn't want to take chances.

I still hate the thought of The Baby having a serious reaction to vaccines and something bad happening. But whooping cough (and other diseases like measles) that were almost eradicated, are making such a comeback that they've killed more children this year than they EVER did before the vaccines. Credit that for the amount of world travel that exists now and the scares that vaccines causes Autism (which has been disproved a hundred times over but it was so prevalent in the media that it still persists today).

Anyhow, the current rates of circumcision in the United States are about 58 percent. Eighteen states do not cover the procedure under Medicaid. But, I think that's about to change. The research I did before my baby had the procedure is finally coming out in a panel judgement. The panel of doctors from the CDC determined that the health benefits of circumcision outweigh the risks. There is clear evidence that circumcision helps prevent the spread of HPV and HIV. This story from NBC talks more about the results.

 As a parent I do not want to ever think about my child having sex. I'm just coming to terms with the fact that he has even discovered his genitals. But, one day it is going to happen. I pray that it is with his wife on their honeymoon and he never has to worry about those 3-letter diseases. But, if it doesn't go that way, I'm trying to do my part to protect him from what I can... from whooping cough to HIV. Of course we cannot get around the fact that the Bible called for circumcision in the Old Testament as a necessary procedure to become "clean". Although Jesus said it is not necessary for Salvation, perhaps the Old Testament has more relevant instructions to live by today than we realize.

I just want to say in closing.. these are my own personal reasons.  Whatever yours are, I just hope you have done your research before deciding to cut or not. I see both sides of the issue, and we parents should still be given the right to choose.