Do JWs circumcise?

by Imbue 20 Replies latest jw friends

  • Scully
    Scully

    I've assisted at several circumcisions at the hospital where I work. I've noticed that it's about a 50-50 split for JWs to circumcise their sons or choose to leave them intact.

    The government of Ontario has not covered the circumcision of newborns since 1996. If parents wish to have their son circumcised, they are required to pay a fee to the hospital and a fee to the physician who performs it. The fee is currently $200.

    What I find ironic is that the more educated and well-to-do the family is, the more likely that they will choose not to circumcise their sons. The opposite is also true: the people who are poorly educated and financially challenged are the ones more likely to circumcise their boys. That's just an observation I've made, but I'd like to follow it up with statistics.

    Love, Scully

    PS to Joy: Do you really "have" to do the procedure if you find it morally repugnant and "barbaric"? I won't assist in doing them anymore, and my supervisor respects that the same way she would if I declined to assist at an abortion.


  • Billygoat
    Billygoat

    I was almost 11 when my baby brothers were born. I remember the discussion my parents had about circumcizing them. I don't remember it being a religious discussion, but a health discussion. Could we keep the babies organs clean? But they were born 8 weeks premature and had a lot of other major health issues to worry about. My folks opted to not circumcise them because there were other more important issues at hand - keeping the babies alive. I don't ever remember them having any real issues NOT being circumsized - it was just a matter of keeping the area really clean.

    Andi

  • flower
    flower

    i did so much research when i was pregnant but sitting in the hospital i realized i totally forgot about this subject and had absolutely no knowledge of what was supposed to be or not supposed to be done. i only remembered when they asked me. i looked at my mom and she said yes so ..snip snip. i dont think they did a good job either..i feel sorry for him. but then again i dont have much to compare it to.

  • Elsewhere
    Elsewhere

    [SOB!!!] They cut me! When I was a baby, my mom made the doctor cut me!

    Ohhh the horror!

    Mr. Happy will never be the same...

    "As every one knows, there are mistakes in the Bible" - The Watchtower, April 15, 1928, p. 126
    Believe in yourself, not mythology.
    <x ><

  • Matty
    Matty

    It's not something that is done much in Europe. I don't know of any case of a JW family getting their kids circumscised for religious reasons. Isn't it more of a cultural rather than a religious thing in the US? Is it true that American women are so used to men being circumcised that they think that an uncircumcised man is, I dunno, unclean or something?

  • Joyzabel
    Joyzabel

    Good question Scully,

    I really had to decide if the service I was performing bothered me that much to not do it. I've come to the point that I'm not going to inflict my conscience on others. I will discuss the procedure with the parents, invite them to watch as I perform it, but leave it to them to decide. It's a service most OB/CNM practices offer and the busy practice I was in wouldn't want to lose business over such a routine procedure.

    I didn't have my two boys circumcised. I feel they can make that decision about their bodies when they are adults.

    Btw, USA is the only industrialized country that circumcises babies routinely. Europe, Asia, Africa, South America countries don't routinely circumcise. Most midwives I meet from those countries wonder what’s wrong with the men from the USA who are circumcised!

    j2bf

  • Billygoat
    Billygoat

    I don't think it's so much we think them "unclean" but just different. Personally, I've never seen a grown man's uncircumcized penis. (Just on my baby brothers when I changed their diapers.) I've heard from girl friends that it makes no difference to them - as long as the man is a good lover, the penis itself doesn't "act" any differently. Haha! That just sounds so funny.

  • NeonMadman
    NeonMadman

    Just for the record, the Watchtower considers it a personal decision whether to have a newborn boy circumcised. So the answer to the thread's titular question is, some circumcise, some don't.

    However, the organization does routinely emasculate its men.

    [8>]

    Tom

    "At midnight all the agents and the superhuman crew go out and round up everyone who knows more than they do"
    --Bob Dylan
  • LDH
    LDH
    Is it true that American women are so used to men being circumcised that they think that an uncircumcised man is, I dunno, unclean or something?

    Only the stupid ones.

    If it takes me seeing your uncircumcised pee pee is filthy to realize you are unclean, that'd be pretty pathetic. I'd think a better indicator of how clean your pee pee is; is your surroundings, LOL. I'll look in your fridge, first, LOL, before I risk seeing whether your package is dirty.

    All of the men I've dated have been CLEAN. But I'm pretty picky.

    Lisa

  • Joseph Joachim
    Joseph Joachim

    Just for the record, the Watchtower considers it a personal decision whether to have a newborn boy circumcised.

    Of course they do. They would never condemn a practice that is so common among white American protestants. If people in the US smoked as much as in Europe, then smoking would be regarded as a matter of conscience too.

    In Latin America, circumcision is an exclusively Jewish practice. A JW couple who circumcised their son would be seen as weird and the Elders would raise their eyebrows.

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