Stop these operations

Published on Wednesday 5 March 2008 20:38

Isn't it ironic that as the United Nations launched a campaign to eradicate all types of forced female circumcision, proclaiming it a "violation of the rights of a child", NHS Lothian launched a service providing for the involuntary genital modification of Scottish boys?

NHS Lothian claims non-therapeutic circumcision protects the "health and wellbeing" of a boy (if he's an ethnic minority). Yet this is an operation that removes 50-80 per cent of the penile skin system, and most of its fine-touch neuroreceptors, leaving the sexual senses altered forever. How can the Scottish NHS justify this irreversible sexual amputation with neither medical need nor patient consent? It seems the answer is political correctness.

Yet political correctness has never been applied to forced female circumcision, even though its mildest forms, as practised in many Islamic communities, are similar to male circumcision. Removing a girl's foreskin (or that of an animal) is punishable by a jail sentence.

LAURA MacDONALD, De Beauvoir Crescent, London