Swiss Legal Experts Divided Over Circumcision

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By Sophie Douez

Moves by two Swiss hospitals to suspend the practice of circumcising boys in the wake of an adverse court ruling about the procedure in Germany have sparked heated debate amongst legal experts in Switzerland.

The children’s hospitals of Zurich and St Gallen announced they had suspended the practice after the Cologne district court ruled last month that circumcision for religious purposes amounted to willful bodily harm which could be punishable under criminal law.

Switzerland
Switzerland

“We only carry out one or two circumcisions for religious reasons per month, so we can very well take the time to evaluate the situation and to take a decision,” a spokesperson for Zurich Children’s Hospital said, adding that circumcisions for medical reasons were not affected by the moratorium.

“We are evaluating the legal situation in Switzerland, but also the ethical aspects. There are, for example, complicated situations where the mother of a child wants the circumcision but the father does not.”

Religious groups in Switzerland, including Jews and Muslims for whom circumcision is a religious ritual, and Christian churches, have condemned the decision by the hospitals as an attack on religious freedom.

Marcel Niggli, professor of criminal law at Fribourg University told swissinfo.ch the two hospitals had “overreacted”, and questioned why they were acting in response to a ruling in Germany which had no legal implications in Switzerland.

He said that although Swiss and German laws were similar in that they are based on the principle that medical procedures do not constitute inflicted injury when they are carried out to better a person’s health, “a court decision in Germany is not more important [to Switzerland] than one in China or Argentina”.

But professor Martin Killias, a criminologist at Zurich University, said the German ruling was simply a “point of ignition” for a debate which had been brewing for some time. He said the hospitals had “absolutely” taken the right decision in suspending the practice of circumcision.

“I think they are opening a debate and there are obviously several points to be considered,” Killias told swissinfo.ch. “Beyond criminal law, it simply asks the question whether hospitals want to do that? I could imagine that hospitals could say that according to our view this is against our ethical standards in medicine.”

Health benefits?

Although circumcision is traditionally practised as part of a religious ritual, several studies undertaken in recent years suggest that the practice could have health benefits too.

The World Health Organization says there is “compelling” evidence to suggest that male circumcision reduces the risk of heterosexually acquired HIV infection in men by 60 per cent and is promoting the scale-up of male adult circumcision programmes for HIV prevention in Africa .

“You can show from research done that circumcision betters the health of the person concerned, they have lower risk of contracting or transmitting specific diseases,” said Niggli. “It is not endangering life and this is also what makes the difference with female circumcision.”

He said that if you ruled that medical circumcision amounted to inflicting injury for purposes which did not improve a person’s health, then the same could be argued in the case of cosmetic surgery procedures.

“I find it rather strange that you can do whatever you want as long as it does not have a religious element,” Niggli said.

But Killias said that: “It is up to the patient to decide what he considers an improvement and aesthetical operations can also have direct [positive] psychological impacts, so I think in these circumstances, I don’t see why this [cosmetic surgery] could be problematic in terms of criminal law.”

Competing rights

Killias said although he was not a medical expert, the question of health justifications for circumcision was “controversial”. He said the key point in the debate is that the child is not able to decide for himself if he wants to undergo the procedure for either religious or aesthetic reasons.

“If circumcision was practised at the age of 16 when young people are considered mature in terms of religious self-determination, nobody would debate about it,” he said. “But if it is done with young children, I see that there is obviously a conflict between the rights of the child and the freedom of religion of the parents.”

Niggli argued that as parents, people have both the right and the obligation to act in the best interests in their child, in which case they can take the decision of circumcision on behalf of the child “because circumcision is a small thing, it’s not anything endangering life and you can show that statistically, this betters the health situation”.

As to questions of religious freedom, Killias said history had shown that beliefs within the different religions had evolved and changed over the generations, and so they should be encouraged to do on the question of circumcision as well.

“Democratic and open societies have a right to impose certain values and we do that also in other respects,” he said. “We are more and more outlawing the physical punishment of children and for me, it is hardly acceptable that it should be a criminal offence to slash a child but no problem at all to disfigure its sexual organs forever.”

(With input from agencies)

SwissInfo

swissinfo is an enterprise of the Swiss Broadcasting Corporation (SBC). Its role is to inform Swiss living abroad about events in their homeland and to raise awareness of Switzerland in other countries. swissinfo achieves this through its nine-language internet news and information platform.

3 thoughts on “Swiss Legal Experts Divided Over Circumcision

  • July 30, 2012 at 11:37 am
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    Circumcision is “a minor surgery” and “not a threat to a person’s life?”

    And what is it that happens every year at circumcision initiation schools in South Africa? Those deaths must be “imaginary” then.

    If circumcision is so “minor,” and “not life endangering,” then what of the child involved in the case? Have we forgotten about him?

    He almost died of hemorrhage and was left with a disfigured organ.

    “Oh well, it’s a parent’s decision” when it comes to boys, but bloody murder when it comes to girls? Why the sexist double-standard?

    “You can show from research done that circumcision betters the health of the person concerned… (because men with foreskins are UN-healthy?), they have lower risk of contracting or transmitting specific diseases…”

    That is not actually what data shows. What it shows is that STD transmission is higher in the United States, where 80% of the men are circumcised, than in Europe, where circumcision is rare.

    What if you could show with “research” that female circumcision “improves a woman’s health?” Would that make the forced circumcision of girls OK then?

    Yes, let’s change the intentions. That ought to change the fact that a boy in Cologne nearly DIED, even though the non-medically indicated procedure was carried out by a doctor in a hospital.

    Niggli is a self-serving ignoranimus and is not fit for his own job.

    Reply
  • July 30, 2012 at 6:04 pm
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    Circumcision doesn’t kill anyone? Yeah, tell that to Angelo Ofori-Mintah, David Reimer, and Riley McWillis. Oh wait. You can’t. Because they all died due to circumcision. This Niggli guy has no clue what he’s talking about.

    Reply
  • July 31, 2012 at 11:35 am
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    Modern medicine’s biggest misadventure is its involvement in an ancient blood ritual involving the sexual organs of children. Circumcision has masqueraded as medicine for far too long already and it’s coming to an end. Anyone who cares to look will see ‘health benefits’ exist only on the mind of a small number of circumcision advocates and the fraudulent studies they relentlessly publish.

    The Cologne regional court had to simply weigh the right of parents to cut bits off children against the right of children to keep the body parts they were born with. What else could a secular court find???

    It’s difficult to imagine European legislatures wanting to enshrine Sharia-style laws into their own legal systems and constitutions – or Europeans sitting back and allowing their laws and human rights obligations being subverted to appease religious minorities who want to cut children.

    Reply

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