Protect the Newborn, Blas
How many newborns have to get herpes before Mayor de Blasio abandons his pandering to a few Orthodox Jewish powerbrokers? As The Post’s Michael Gartland and Carl Campanile report, the city has ID’d two mohels it believes could endanger children, and told them to stop performing a form of the circumcision ritual that could infect the infants — but won’t tell anyone who they are.
(To be clear, most forms of the ritual are quite safe: relatively few rabbis won’t use a glass tube to suction blood out of the incision.)
Health Commissioner Mary Travis Bassett on Wednesday shared the city’s big idea for enforcing the ban: Have parents ask a prospective mohel if he’s been banned.
Yet four other mohels may be infected: At least six Orthodox infants have contracted herpes under the mayor’s February 2015 agreement with some Orthodox leaders that supposedly had the community policing itself.
This is nuts — and it’s Team de Blasio’s idea of getting tough.
Just two weeks ago, the mayor answered the news of the six infected newborns by saying he was “still evaluating” his policy. A few days later, Speaker Melissa Mark-Viverito promised the City Council would act if the Health Department didn’t.
Well, now Dr. Bassett has testified that she’s not really acting. Sounds like it’s time for the council to act.
This is not an issue of religious freedom, as some claim: The government has not just a right but a duty to intervene when a ritual needlessly endangers infants’ health and most Orthodox rabbis agree the procedure can be done without the risky part.
And the failure of the rabbinical coalition to live up to its bargain with de Blasio and identify mohels who’ve plainly infected tiny children, makes it plain that the community isn’t policing itself.
Maybe the answer is strict Health Department testing to produce a list of mohels who
are cleared to perform the ritual, and criminal charges against any who do it without being certified as clean. Maybe something less severe will do.
But de Blasio’s current approach is a joke.