Norway: Doctors defy new circumcision law

Submitted by Matt on Thu, 2015-01-22 19:34

Article here. Excerpt:

'Since January 1st, all of Norway’s state-run hospitals have become legally obliged to offer circumcision of newborn baby boys. A majority of doctors all over the country, however, have been refusing to perform the operation that’s often part of religious rituals, claiming it’s an unnecessary surgical procedure on otherwise healthy infants.

Only one hospital in all of southeastern Norway is officially offering to circumcise newborns, according to an internal document obtained by newspaper Dagsavisen. In a response to the state health ministry’s request for a status report on circumcision, state agency Helse Sør-Øst (Health Southeast) wrote on January 16 that only the hospital in Kristiansand (Sørlandet Sykehus) offered to circumcise newborn baby boys. A few others offered circumcision only to boys more than a year old.
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At Akershus University Hospital (Ahus) northeast of Oslo, fully 13 of its 15 urologists have submitted written statements reserving themselves against performing circumcision. “The opposition to this emerged before the law on circumcision was approved,” Dr Anja Løvvik, leader of the urology department at Ahus, told Dagsavisen this week. “The fact that many (doctors) want to reserve themselves against this should not be unexpected.” Her colleague Dr Frode Steinar Nilsen at Ahus called circumcision “a surgical operation with no health advantages and one that, as with all surgery, carries with it a risk and a burden for the child. That’s why we don’t want to perform it.”

Doctors, however, have no right to reserve themselves against the procedure in the new law, making their resistance potentially illegal, according to state secretary Cecilie Brein-Karlsen at the health ministry. She told newspapers VG and Dagsavisen that Norway’s public health system must now offer the procedure to parents who want their baby boys circumcised. The Parliament approved the new law last year after reports that babies in Norway risked being seriously injured during circumcision rituals performed outside the health care sector. One baby boy died in Oslo in 2012.'

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Comments

As an American now living in Norway for three years, allow me to voice an opinion.

On the one hand, I understand why the Norwegian government is trying to require this procedure if it is requested.

Norway is stretched out over a wide area, separated by Fjords. Access is not easy.

And when refugees arrive, the government puts them, sometimes, in remote locations where there is often need for manual work.

There is great fear that if a hospital refuses, that some of these idiots will attempt the circumision themselves and do irreparable damage to the baby boys.

That said, I still support the doctors who are refusing.

First, because they would not require female genital multilation be done.

Second, because when the government did something for abortion -- allowing doctors to make up their own mind -- the feminists vetoed it.

Third, because we must establish the culture that circumcision is an act of barbarism against men.

I do wish to point out that last year, two men took control of the cancer research board at the national level and redirected breast cancer research funding toward prostate cancer research.

So, unlike Sweden, the feminists here do like men.

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Submitted by ThomasI on Fri, 2015-01-23 14:22