By MICHELLE BOORSTEIN
Associated Press Writer, April 8, 1999

Tim Shane has grown used to parents at baby fairs making snide comments as they pass his booth, or recoiling from his pamphlets as though they might be subversive.

After all, his is no ordinary crusade. For years Shane has been fighting something American society takes for granted: circumcision.

Parents have routinely circumcised their sons in the United States since the 1940s, motivated by deeply rooted medical, religious and social beliefs. By 1970, more than 90 percent of newborn boys were circumcised.

But things are changing.

Today about 65 percent of infant males are circumcised in the United States, the only industrialized nation where it remains routine. Scientists are churning out new research on penile sensitivity, hygiene and pain, and for the first time parents are asking questions.

In recent years, Shane says, so many people have been visiting his booth at baby fairs that he has had to hire more staff.

The time is right, said Shane, who lives in Morganton, N.C. More and more men are realizing the losses they’ve suffered.

The biggest boost for the anti-circumcision movement came last month when the influential American Academy of Pediatrics said it no longer recommends circumcision as a routine procedure.

The position is similar to the AAP’s first on circumcision, in 1971. However, the academy shifted its stance in 1989, saying the practice had worthwhile medical benefits.

It now says any potential benefits are insignificant and sees medical and anecdotal evidence that circumcised men have less penile sensitivity. At the same time, it says research on the negative aspects of circumcision is inconclusive and much of it anecdotal.

Nearly a dozen anti-circumcision groups have cropped up in the last decade. Some disseminate medical research, others legal advice. One group teaches men how to stretch their penile skin to re-create a foreskin.

They have Web sites, mailing lists, bumper stickers and T-shirts, international symposiums, and chapters here and abroad.

Shane runs the southwestern North Carolina chapter of NOCIRC — the National Organization of Circumcision Information Resource Centers, which has opened six chapters in the past year in his state alone.

Shane, 58, said he has always been troubled by circumcision. This has been important to me since I realized something had been taken from me that made me different — a lot of people I grew up with were not (circumcised), he said. Its like being born blind — how do you know what color is?

He said he has seven adopted sons, two of whom have circumcision-related medical problems.

Lawyers are available around the country to try cases in which parents didn’t give consent or the surgery was bungled. Advocates have tried, unsuccessfully, to have circumcision outlawed in North Dakota. Doctors are researching such aspects as the composition of the foreskin and the effect of circumcision on female sexual arousal.

Radio shock jock Howard Stern has taken to railing publicly against his circumcision. And last summer Mens Health, a major mens magazine, floored readers with this cover story: Did circumcision ruin your sex life? It said the story got more letters than any in its history, most opposing circumcision.

Rabbi Gerald Chirnomas, who estimates he has done more than 11,000 brises, or Jewish ritual circumcisions, says he has been getting more not too complimentary mail in recent years.

Its beginning to affect the Jewish community, especially in California. I get reports from people who have kids in that area. All of a sudden they dont want to have a bris because of this, said Chirnomas, of Boonton, N.J.

Because Jews have been circumcising their sons for thousands of years, the practice is associated with Judaism. However, most American boys who are circumcised are non-Jews, and their parents agree to the surgery, doctors say, because they believe it has medical and social benefits.

Jewish ritual circumcisers say the medical debate is irrelevant, because the bris is a sacred covenant with God, commanded in Genesis. Nothing enters into it like, Is this something to do or is it bad for the baby? Ritually its not a choice and its not about the risks and benefits, said Dr. Alan Altman, a mohel, or ritual circumciser, from Brookline, Mass.

Optional or not, Chirnomas says opposition is heating up.

I dont think they’re on the level of anti-abortionists, but its definitely having an effect.

Some activists stand outside hospitals holding mockups of babies strapped to circumcision boards and playing recordings of infant screams. On the steps of the Capitol this month, five people demonstrated with banners that said stop infant circumcision.

But mainstream opponents distance themselves from those tactics.

I feel protesting makes one look as a fringe lunatic rather than as a serious person, and everyone I’ve met is a serious human being, educated, and believes that this is wrong, said David J. Llewellyn, director of the Atlanta Circumcision Information Center.

Many campaigners believe deeply rooted attitudes about gender and maleness have led to a notion that circumcision is a rite of passage reserved for boys. Some argue that a 1996 law passed by Congress to outlaw genital mutilation of females younger than 18, a jarring cultural practice among immigrants from some African and Muslim nations, violates the federal equal protection clause because it protects only girls from circumcision.

Several lawyers, including the Berkeley, Calif.-based group Attorneys for the Rights of the Child, are working on a challenge to the 1996 law, arguing it violates the federal equal protection clause.

Pediatricians on the AAP panel that assessed circumcision say that while the foreskin clearly does have nerve endings, the effect of circumcision on sexual satisfaction is difficult to prove.

What we have are people who have personal beliefs and are attempting to back that with what they call research — unscientific research, said Alan Fleischman, a pediatrician at the New York Academy of Medicine.

Marilyn Milos, the midwife who started NOCIRC in 1985, is considered the mother of the modern movement. Her bumper sticker says Circumcision is a phallusy. But she knows there are hurdles to overcome.

What man wants to admit hes lost tens of thousands of nerve endings? she says. What mother wants to admit her baby suffered needlessly?