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Notes -
Here are two articles about PEPFAR (EDIT: one of the organizations for which funding has been paused) that I think are worth reading.
https://brendonmarotta.com/4454/pepfar-plans-to-end-infant-circumcision-in-africa/
tl;dr: PEPFAR is responsible for an unknown but very large number of botched circumcisions in Africa, perhaps hundreds of thousands.
https://brendonmarotta.com/4475/pepfar-to-experiment-on-african-children-with-the-shangring/
tl;dr: An article about them moving from a circumcision device with an unacceptable rate of botched circumcisions to a new device with an unknown rate of botched circumcisions.
Any circumcision on someone who cannot consent is a human rights violation. I realize some of PEPFARs other tasks are praise-worthy, but I cannot possibly support an organization that engages in this sort of unnecessary cruelty.
As long as we assume that living with a botched circumcision is still better than dying of AIDS, I don't see how this is sufficient grounds to condemn an organization that has saved tens of millions of lives, perhaps more than any other foreign aid program in history.
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Do you think Jews violate human rights in circumcising their children?
Yes. Especially their influence for propagating circumcision on the west.
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Yes.
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Why would the religion of the perpetrator make a difference in the poster's moral proclamation?
Because it's a way to make concrete a claim about abstract principles. The obvious next question is "what do you think should be done about it?"
"Infant circumcision is a human rights violation" "Judaism is founded on a ritual that is a human rights violation" and "Circumcision should be banned, and Jews who continue the practice should be jailed" are three distinct statements, and it's instructive to see how far someone is willing to ride this particular train.
If one truly believes that it's a human rights violation, then following it through to jailing those who practice it seems like a reasonable conclusion regardless of what cultural practice is hung up on doing it.
Human sacrifice was a much more common religious practice at some point in history too. Eventually practitioners were jailed or exiled enough to greatly reduce its prevalence. I'm sure there were people asking, "do you really think the Aztecs are committing human rights violations by sacrificing to the sun god?"
The only way to answer it is with the chad yes.
As mentioned recently, this is why I'm not a liberal any more. "human rights" doesn't trace back to a set of objective facts, it's a label intended for use in coordinating use of force, and it can and is applied entirely arbitrarily, even to the point of self-contradiction.
Liberalism of this sort is breathtakingly stupid, astonishingly dangerous, and utterly ubiquitous.
It's stupid, because it assumes order and social structure for the foundation of an argument intended to prosecute arbitrary divisions of order and social structure; it's taking a concept intrinsically designed to be applied to the margins and aiming it at the center and expecting everything to work out fine.
It's dangerous because it encourages people to initiate and escalate conflicts they can't actually win.
It's ubiquitous because it's the basic social technology our whole society runs on, and that the majority of people have no defense against.
Liberalism takes it as axiomatic that "Religion" and "Human Rights" and "Freedom" are conceptual primitives. When that turns out to be false, it has no Plan B.
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Did you mean to post this as a top-level? Cause I don’t see any mention of “PEPFAR” in the parent.
PEPFAR is among the organizations with paused funding, and when I've seen the executive orders discussed in other places it has been the focus of the discussion.
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My guess is the relevance is here:
Links to a blog of an activists who writes books and makes documentaries to end circumcision. IME the intactivist bunch make radical claims well beyond anything the evidence supports, and bring up circumcision whenever possible in hope of ending what just might be the most barbaric practice mankind has ever conceived.
Do I support unnecessary circumcision of children? No, not really. But every time I look at the evidence, I can't see any reason to get worked up about the topic. I hope the bizarre practice dies out.
The claims made in these specific articles are supported by the evidence, which you will see if you read them.
In this case I felt justified in bringing up the subject, because it is the primary organization which is being discussed with respect to foreign aid being paused.
If massive numbers of botched circumcisions isn't a reason to get worked up about the topic, what would be?
So to be fair, I went back and gave a light read to the two linked posts and threw 5 minutes of googling at the results. AFAIKT, the posts contain mostly hysteria, confusion, and misunderstandings. The Mogen Clip is very much around. Complication rates in US setting for serious adverse events is somewhere around 1/1M, or 700/1M for any serious event - usually not enough skin removal, leading to a repeat procedure. Complication rates go up 10-20X 1 year after birth. Any complication, including excess bleeding,
2%.The PEPFAR program seems like it is regulating itself on the cautionary principle, and winding down circumcision efforts (despite the fact that Hillary Clinton gave PEPFAR $40M in tax dollars OMG!!! Not Hillary!!)
I saw language about "high numbers" of "botched" circumcisions. But I didn't see data or definitions. Maybe I missed it, but given the insanely low serious complication rate in the US, I'm highly suspicious. I imagine this voluntary up to 15 tanner-3 circumcision program has a higher relative rate, but probably a low absolute rate. This is just a guess. Circumcision in Africa are (were?) complicated by dint of being rolled out in AIDS endemic areas (1/3rd of adult male population in 2000 iirc), so its at least plausible that such programs, having performed tens of millions of circumcisions, prevented hundreds or thousands of horrid deaths from HIV/aids. But who knows? They seem to be pulling back in 2019 (when AIDS meds were quite good).
In case its necessary to reiterate, I'm against circumcision.
Well I certainly don't want it to seem like no level of agreement will ever be enough for me.
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