CDC Must Stop Advocating Circumcision

Virtually everyone in the Western world seems to agree that female circumcision is horrible. It greatly reduces sexual pleasure, violates individual autonomy, and provides no discernible health benefits. Well, all that is true of male circumcision, too, writes Ethan Epstein, yet the CDC is considering a plan to “promote routine circumcision” for infant boys. It’s “as degrading as it is illiberal.”

The push supposedly is intended to help reduce the spread of HIV. But the evidence behind that claim is incredibly dubious, and even if it did help, it “would remain an affront to human dignity,” Epstein writes for Spiked. Men deserve to control their body just as much as women. No one—not their parents, and certainly not the CDC—should involuntarily deny boys a lifetime of sexual pleasure. (More AIDS stories.)