Of course we are not talking about state-controlled penis inspections, but during routine examinations, a doctor would of course notice that a child has been circumcised and ask the parents if there was a medical indication for that (which it never is in the age when religious circumcisions are performed btw).
Forced circumcision without medical indication is a violation of a child's bodily integrity and a free society cannot tolerate such behavior, because doing so would bring us down an even worse slippery slope. What if parents beat their children black and blue, or abuse them in other ways? At which point do you draw the line, where we need to protect children from their parents?
In a free society, any such violations of the non-aggression principle must be sanctioned appropriately.
Go to youtube and watch a child being circumcised.
That helped my wife and I to decide to not do that evil Hebraic religious ceremony on our sons.
I think we watched one, wept and made a decision. That was 8 years ago. I have no regrets.
If you see a Rabbi perform it ................................. these people.
You're naive if you think such laws can be enforced, or will be, without state mandated inspections.
Particularly as most circumcisions are performed by doctors, doctors will not be trusted to self-report. Consider abortion as a good example. How many back alley abortions were performed before planned parenthood gained access to the foetal tissues legally?
I submit that in a free society, there are limits on the limits one can impose. While I abhor genital mutiliation of children, and did not allow it to be done to my sons, I cannot have a right to protect other's children without assuming powers unjust and tyrannical.
Therefore, any such discouragement needs to be done carefully, so as to preclude tyrannical imposition on parental rights. And free societies inherently survive interminable violations of the non-aggression principle - so long as those violations aren't committed by the state, or other groups of armed thugs.
As soon as that lawful permission to violate the non-aggression principle is granted the state, the free society is over.
Once again, circumcision is NOT a parental right. It's child abuse. And if a free society can't prevent such abuse without granting tyrannical power to a state, then maybe, the idea of a free society is not so good after all. This is in fact a valid statist argument: If we don't have a state, we cannot prevent everyday crime.
So if we want to have a free society, the first thing we need to do is erect a system that has the ability to punish any violation of the NAP in some way. Otherwise, it won't work.
Sadly, you seem unable to grasp that erecting a facility nominal to police the very private parts of free people's families will be a prize sought with every possible Machiavellian intrigue by evil people seeking power.
While it's great that you and I agree on genital mutilation, the truth is that were we to assume the power to enforce our will on the world, we'd become the very tyrants we most despise. Other people don't agree. I can't assume responsibility for their minds, nor their children.
There are far worse people than you and I eagerly awaiting this power, for the most malignant perversion of justice imaginable. That is the true power of a free society - that it precludes tyranny.
Reality is such that our opinions matter to our families because we are free to act on them regarding circumcision. Consider if such power is granted the state, and state officials are bribed to subvert our wills. The freedom to not circumcise our kids can be prevented, and the state could force us to have them clipped.
This is a power that needs must never be granted the state.
The fact also is that reason and sanity are contagious, and circumcision is waning despite efforts to keep it common by institutions. Freedom is working right now, and granting more power to the state is exactly the kind of thing that can turn that on it's head.
'Save the children' is ever the refrain of totalitarianism used to gull people into granting power over themselves. It's being done right now regarding the FL shooting. It is the exact argument you are making here, too.
If the enemedia were saying 'folks that care about kids shouldn't shoot them.' I'd agree 100%. What they're saying is 'everyone must be disarmed so that our kids can be safe from being shot.' A lot of people don't want children to be shot, myself included. But arming those kids is the best way to keep them safe from being shot, and that's why I taught my kids to shoot.
We can succeed at protecting children best from being abused by using reason, rather than force. Folks won't all agree, but subjecting everyone to the power of the state to enforce what is reasonable WILL be abused, and will end up with far worse evils being done to ALL our kids by the psychopaths that pursue such edifices of power.
To even dream otherwise is hopelessly naive.
What if people cut their children's arms off for religious reasons? I guess you would agree that this could not be tolerated by a free society, so why should circumcision be any different?
Bodily integrity is not an issue of family life, but a basic human right. If you want to live in a free society you must create some instance that protects negative freedoms like the freedom from harm, and that has the power to sanction violations of these freedoms, or otherwise your free society will be worthless.
There needs to be no state for that. Guardians ad litem already sorta perform that role, and they could be privatized, subsisting on tort awards for cases of abuse.
I'm not against protecting kids genitals from mutilation. Arms being hacked off are impossible to hide. No inspections necessary to reveal the harm.
I'm against creating a state power to mandate genital health.
Tort actions in private courts in a competitive market, complete with Yelp! reviews would suffice to meet the need. If a jury found the parents guilty of causing such harm, there'd have to be a just sanction.
Dunno how it'd actually all work out, but it couldn't be worse than what we have in family courts now. There is no more foul bastion of evil than American family courts, anywhere, nor has there ever been.
I was a single father because my ex's parental rights were terminated. I cannot describe the hellish corruption I contended with, and only because of competent counsel was I fortunate enough to be able to raise my sons.
See, that would be a solution already. If you gave people the ability to sue doctors for mutilating them in their childhood, that would already be enough deterrence to make infant circumcision history. Most doctors simply won't risk being sued for malpractice.
But in order for that to work out, we first need to formally declare that infant circumcision is indeed child abuse and Iceland has done a great step in that direction.
The devil is in the details, my friend. What Iceland has done is to grant to the state the power to enforce that moral code.
If you think carefully, you'll see how my description allows no state to tyrannically impose it's will. Juries, courts as services, guardians ad litem seeking bounties, etc., are all utterly freewill undertakings, and incapable of imposing immoral, but profitable to corporations, genital health against the will of free people.
We see in the world that every state or governmental power is corrupted by criminals for profit, and once the power, granted on the basis of rhetoric is in the hands of the state, the people no longer have the power.
We, the individual free people of the world, needs must not allow this power to be so corrupted.
I submit that Iceland has instead created a circumstance that will eventuate penis inspections of hapless children whose parents will be unable to not comply.
Government inevitably is corrupted, because the people acting as the officials are corruptable. I can count on one hand the public servants I remain sure were not corrupt, and have fingers left over.