Failure is Impossible: The significance of the Hironimus vs. Nebus circumcision case for America

Article here. Excerpt:

'It took over 70 years of determined, dogged and dedicated effort to gain the right for women to vote in the United States. Seventy years. The women and men who initially campaigned for universal suffrage didn’t live to see the passage of the 19th amendment.

Susan B. Anthony was jailed, chastised and ridiculed. She nonetheless remained faithful to the eventual success of her vision. “Failure is impossible,” she stated, energizing the younger activists who would pick up the mantle after her death.

Failure is impossible

A great deal has changed since Anthony’s time. Women can now own property, initiate divorce, vote, and serve as lawyers, judges, and on a jury. We take these basic rights for granted and easily forget that a few generations ago they existed only as illuminating ideas held true by a handful of “fringe” activists. For example, my paternal grandfather was born in 1918, before any of the aforementioned rights were legal.
...
I am an intactivist.

I firmly support the right to genital integrity for all children. I uphold the rights of individuals, upon reaching the age of consent, to choose whether or not they want to permanently alter the most private parts of their bodies -- be it for religious, cultural or personal reasons.

As in any social justice movement, the intactivist community is diverse. Some of us live and work in countries where the cutting of girls is a widely practiced religious and/or cultural norm. Some of us live and work in countries where the cutting of boys is openly accepted. Intactivists opposing such practices range widely in their approach to protest. Like the suffragette bloomers, America’s “bloodstained men” boldly challenge emotionally charged norms in visible and daring ways. Other intactivists are quiet in the holdings of opinions; perhaps only voicing them with a polite “No, thank you” when asked by a labor and delivery nurse if a newborn boy is to be circumcised.

Recently, intactivist Heather Hironimus, a mother whose story continues to make headline news, served jail time and faced intense public scrutiny as she engaged in a Herculean struggle to safeguard the rights and well-being of her 4 ½ year-old son.

Charged with contempt of court for refusing to sign consent forms authorizing an unwanted and unnecessary elective circumcision, Hironimus fled to a domestic violence shelter. There, she took refuge with her son for over 80 days. Currently, she is being punished for violating the custody agreement she had with the boy’s father, Dennis Nebus, who didn’t have access to his regular visitations while Hironimus and the boy lived and received counseling in the center.'

Like0 Dislike0

Comments

All this boy has to do is make a public statement:

"If you cut me, I will sue you when I am 18. I will sue you and any organization that facilitated this."

That will be the end of it. I wish he would make it soon.

Like0 Dislike0