Iceland bill banning circumcision alarms some
A bill in Iceland that could make it a crime to circumcise infant boys for nonmedical reasons is drawing strong support from hundreds of doctors and nurses there, and criticism from religious leaders.
Ahmad Seddeeq, the imam of the Islamic Cultural Center of Iceland, called it “a contravention to the religious rights of freedom” that criminalizes a centuries-old tradition.
The bill, introduced last month by four political parties, uses the same wording as a 2005 Icelandic law banning female genital mutilation, changing the word “girls” to “children,” Silja Dogg Gunnarsdottir of the centrist Progressive Party, said. Those who violate the ban could be imprisoned for up to six years.
While many children do not have complications from circumcision, she said, “one is too many if the procedure is unnecessary.”
Religious organizations say that is a weak argument.
“I think they should also propose that parents should not take the children skiing — or pierce their ears,” said Rabbi Pinchas Goldschmidt, the president of the Conference of European Rabbis.
Gunnarsdottir insisted that the bill was not “against religion.” She and her colleagues chose to focus on circumcision, she said, because the United Nations Convention on the Rights of the Child states that children who are capable of forming their own views have the right to “express those views freely.” It also says that countries should ban practices prejudicial to the health of children, she said.
At least 400 doctors — about a quarter of the practicing doctors in Iceland — have signed a petition in support of the bill.
In the United States, the latest numbers from the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention show circumcision is on the decline, from about 64 percent of boys born in hospital settings in 1979 to 58 percent in 2010.
A study published in 2014 in JAMA Pediatrics, an American Medical Association journal, approximated that there were still 1.4 million circumcisions a year in medical settings.
The Icelandic Medical Association has yet to weigh in on the current bill.