SAN FRANCISCO (AP):On the eighth day of her son's life, Julia Query welcomed friends and family to celebrate his birth and honour their Jewish heritage.
But there was no crying, no scalpel, no blood, no 'mohel' - the person who traditionally performs ritual circumcisions in the Jewish faith. In fact, Elijah Rose's 'bris' differed markedly from the ceremony long used to initiate Jewish boys into a covenant with God: There was no circumcision.
"I knew before I was even pregnant that I would not circumcise," said Query, 39, a San Francisco film-maker whose son was born in 2002. "It's not like you're just cutting a piece of paper off a pad - there's no 'cut here' line. It's not made to be cut off, and I would never, ever do that to my baby."
Query is among a growing number of American parents refusing circumcision, in which the foreskin is removed from the penis.
According to data from the National Health and Social Life Survey, the United States (U.S.) circumcision rate peaked at nearly 90 per cent in the early 1960s but began dropping in the '70s. By 2004, the most recent year for which government figures are available, about57 per cent of all male newborns delivered in hospitals were circumcised. In some states, the rate is well below 50 per cent.
Different values
Experts say immigration patterns play the biggest role in the decline, which is steepest in Western states with big populations from Asian and Latin American countries where circumcision is uncommon. The trend has also accompanied a change in Americans' attitudes toward medicine and their bodies.
"The rates of drug-free labour and breastfeeding all rose during the 1980s, while the initial declines in male circumcision rates began during the 1980s as well," said Katharine Barrett, an anthropology lecturer at Stanford University. "It may have been part and parcel of the wider effort to reclaim bodies - adult female and infant male - from unnecessary and potentially harmful medical interventions."
Circumcision remains the U.S.'s most common surgery, and the country is still one of the few developed countries where a majority of baby boys are circumcised. But circumcision is a heated issue and the subject of vehemently pro and anti websites.
"We were all circumcised when I was born," said R. Louis Schultz, a 79-year-old New Yorker and author of Out in the Open: The Complete Male Pelvis. "People thought it could ward off masturbation or disease, and those funny attitudes have really changed. Now people are saying, 'Why do it?'"
Many doctors still recommend circumcision because of some evidence that it reduces the risk of penile cancer, urinary tract infections, HIV and perhaps other sexually transmitted diseases. Many major insurance companies still cover it, and many hospitals offer it free for newborns.
