Photo and blurring credit — AleXander Hirka / Used with permission / Use your imagination

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OK, Let’s Talk Bodily Autonomy

And ask why infant boys in the U.S. are denied it by the millions

Remington Write
4 min readJul 17, 2022

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Here’s a sad and baffling bit of irony. In the furor over the repeal of the constitutional right of women to have full autonomy over what happens to their bodies — you remember, Roe v Wade — untold millions of the very people rightfully enraged by this frankly anti-woman move by SCOTUS are opting every day to have their infant sons’ bodily autonomy violated.

They’re gazing lovingly at the downy head of their newborn baby boys and then handing that precious son to a nurse who is going to take him to have a vital part of his body surgically removed for absolutely no valid medical reason.

Another infant is being circumcised.

What a nice, clinical-sounding name for the act of cutting off a uniquely important part of a child’s penis. Let’s call it what it is: genital mutilation. This immediately precipitates us into a cauldron of name-calling, “fact”-slinging, and outrage. Everyone knows that genital mutilation is only done to girls in ignorant, third-world countries. Nothing like that happens in the gleaming state-of-the-art hospitals of The Greatest Country in The World.

Riddle me this: Why is it ok to mutilate — ok, ok, surgically remove — parts of infants’ boy bits while strenuously…

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