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The article argues that male minors have a moral anticipatory right-in-trust not to be circumcised without a medical indication. Topics discussed include ethical, political, and intellectual persuasions of children's rights, parental rights, religious freedom; moral implications to circumcise male minors without a medical indication; and moral rights of male minors.

The article discusses the ethical and legal aspects, and the children's rights issues, concerning non-therapeutic male circumcision, within the context of the debate between the association Attorneys for the Rights of the Child (ARC), the U.S. Centers for Disease Prevention and Control (CDC) and American Academy of Pediatrics (AAP) over the issue. The authors contend that the pain caused by circumcision makes it unethical, including the pain caused to the penis foreskin. The role that parents play in their sons' circumcisions is discussed.

The article discusses the legal and ethical aspects of newborn male circumcision in the U.S. with parental consent, through referencing evidence-based guidelines by the American Academy of Pediatrics (AAP). The role that male circumcision plays in decreasing the risk of diseases, including of penile cancer, increasing sexual health and reducing the risk of the HIV virus, is discussed.

The article aims to illuminate the recent debate in Germany about the legitimacy of circumcision for religious reasons. The aim is both to evaluate the new German law allowing religious circumcision, and to outline the resulting conflict between the surrounding ethical and legal issues. We first elucidate the diversity of legal and medical views on religious circumcision in Germany. Next we examine to what extent invasive and irreversible physical interventions on infant boys unable to given their consent should be carried out for non-medical reasons. To this end, the potential benefits and harms of circumcision for non-medical reasons are compared. We argue that circumcision does not provide any benefits for the 'child as a child' and poses only risks to boys. We then set out to clarify and analyse political (rather than ethical) justifications of the new circumcision law. We demonstrate through this analysis how the circumcision debate in Germany has been transformed from a legal and ethical problem into a political issue, due at least in part to Germany's unique historical context. Although such a particular political sensibility is entirely comprehensible, it raises particular problems when it comes to framing and responding to medical ethical issues - as in the case of religious circumcision. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The paper addresses arguments in the recent philosophical and bioethical literature claiming that social and cultural benefits can justify non-therapeutic male infant circumcision. It rejects these claims by referring to the open future argument, according to which infant circumcision is morally unjustifiable because it violates the child's right to an open future. The paper also addresses an important objection to the open future argument and examines the strength of the objection to refute the application of the argument to the circumcision case. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

A letter to the editor is presented in response to the article "Ritual Male Infant Circumcission and Human Rights" in the 2015(2) issue.