Bodily autonomy starts at birth. Wait for consent.
A movement for letting him decide.
Right now, in most American hospitals, a non-consenting infant has the most sensitive part of his body cut off before he leaves the maternity ward. We're not here to ban anything. We're here to ask one question: why not just wait until he can decide for himself?
Every person deserves the final say over their own body — especially when the change is permanent.
Irreversible elective procedures shouldn't be performed on people who can't say yes or no.
Adults can absolutely still elect this procedure. We just want them to be the ones electing.
Most parents are never told this is elective. Most also aren't told what's actually being removed.
Decades of CDC data show U.S. circumcision rates have been quietly declining since the 1980s. We're not starting from zero — we're accelerating a trend that's already underway.
Not the American one. Not the Canadian one. Not the European ones. The strongest pro-circumcision policy ever issued in the U.S. — the AAP's 2012 statement — explicitly stopped short of recommending the procedure, was allowed to expire in 2017, and has not been replaced since.
"Although health benefits are not great enough to recommend routine circumcision for all male newborns, the benefits of circumcision are sufficient to justify access to this procedure for families choosing it."
American Academy of Pediatrics, 2012 Policy Statement (expired 2017, not replaced).
"The Canadian Paediatric Society does not recommend the routine circumcision of every newborn male."
Canadian Paediatric Society, Position Statement.
"Non-therapeutic circumcision of male minors is a violation of children's rights to autonomy and physical integrity."
Royal Dutch Medical Association (KNMG), joint viewpoint with all major Dutch medical colleges.
"After extensive review of the literature, the RACP does not recommend that routine circumcision in infancy be performed."
Royal Australasian College of Physicians.
The foreskin contains one of the densest concentrations of fine-touch nerve endings on the human body. Peer-reviewed anatomical work — including Sorrells et al. (BJU International, 2007) — has mapped the most sensitive sites on the adult penis and found that several of them are routinely removed during circumcision.
The literature on long-term sexual function is genuinely mixed; we link both perspectives in the sources. But the underlying anatomy is not in serious dispute. The point isn't that circumcision necessarily harms every adult who chooses it. The point is that there's enough at stake — and enough scientific debate — that the decision deserves to be made by the person whose body it is.
We're anti-doing-it-to-someone-who-can't-say-yes. If you want it as an adult, go for it. If your faith calls for it as an adult ritual, that's between you and your faith. The only thing we're pushing back on is performing a permanent, elective procedure on a person who hasn't been asked. Wait for consent. Let him choose.
That's where the manifesto lives, where the receipts get posted, and where the movement is being built in public.
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