New York City Health Board repeals rule on consent forms for circumcision rituals involving the practitioner (mohel) sucking blood from the incision on an infant’s penis (a practise linked to herpes infections in infants)

/ Mike Buchanan

Words fail me. The start of the article:

The New York City Board of Health voted on Wednesday to ease regulations on a controversial circumcision ritual practiced in the ultra-Orthodox Jewish community, fulfilling a priority of Mayor Bill de Blasio.

The vote repealed a Bloomberg-era rule requiring parents to sign a consent form before the ritual, which involves a person performing a circumcision, known as a mohel, to use his mouth to suck blood away from the incision on an infant’s penis. The practice has been linked to herpes infections in infants.

The city’s health department will instead ask hospitals to distribute a brochure to Orthodox families that warns of the risks involved in the ritual, known as metzitzah b’peh. City Hall officials said they were finishing up an agreement with Orthodox leaders so that the mohel would be tested for herpes if an infant was infected.

But those tests, and any penalties for mohels found to be infected, would not be mandated by law.

In effect, Mr. de Blasio, a Democrat, is betting that collaborating with Orthodox leaders — a group that has long felt alienated from government — will do more to protect infants’ health than in previous attempts to impose regulations on a cherished practice, even one linked to two deaths.

4 thoughts on “New York City Health Board repeals rule on consent forms for circumcision rituals involving the practitioner (mohel) sucking blood from the incision on an infant’s penis (a practise linked to herpes infections in infants)”

  2. Scenario 1. Adult man with knife drags adult man behind bush in Central Park, cuts off the chap’s foreskin without anaesthetic or consent and then sucks his bloodied penis. Rather understandably regarded with a certain amount of opprobrium by society.

    Scenario 2. Adult man with knife gathers a crowd, does a spot of chanting, cuts off an infant’s foreskin without consent or anaesthetic, sucks the infants penis (just asking; is there a time-limit set on this portion of the procedure?) – and is offered full protection in law, gets to present a bill to the infant’s parents and, I suspect, gets to sell the aforesaid infant’s stolen foreskin to the cosmetics industry.

    Seems legit. Is it the age difference or the chanting that makes all of the difference?

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  4. The amazing thing is that the controversial part seems to be the sucking. Only a minority of those opposing this are bothered by the child’s penis getting cut up. Yet given the choice most infants would presumably go for the sucking over the cutting.

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