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→Consent for circumcision of minors: Add text and citation.
|DOI=
|format=PDF
|accessdate=2025-05-04
}}</ref>
</blockquote>
Bioethicists Myers & Earp (2020) exhaustively reviewed the evidence for and against the alleged health benefits to a healthy person claimed for non-therapeutic circumcision of a neonate, infant or child. They balanced this against the [[pain]], [[trauma]], and loss of body tissue and function. They concluded the claimed health benefits are insufficient to support surrogate consent for non-therapeutic circumcision. Given this, only the subject can grant consent for a non-therapeutic circumcision, after he reaches the right age for circumcision, which does not occurs until a male reaches the age of consent in his jurisdiction which may vary from 16 to 18 years of age. The present practice in the [[United States]] and elsewhere of parental consent for non-therapeutic circumcision is entirely unethical.
<blockquote>
On the other hand, human rights scholars have increasingly objected to the medically unnecessary genital cutting of any person—whether female, male, or intersex—who either does not or cannot consent to the cutting. Such objections were recently summarized in an international consensus statement published in the <i>American Journal of Bioethics</i>, in which the authors argued
that under most conditions, “cutting any person’s genitals without their informed consent is a
serious violation of their right to bodily integrity. As such, it is impermissible unless the person
is non-autonomous (incapable of consent) and the cutting is medically necessary” and
thus “cannot reasonably be deferred.”<ref name="myers2020">{{REFjournal
|last=Myers
|first=
|init=A
|author-link=Alex Myers
|last2=Earp
|first2=
|init2=BD
|author2-link=Brian D. Earp
|etal=no
|title=What is the best age to circumcise? A medical and ethical analysis
|trans-title=
|language=
|journal= Bioethics
|location=
|date=2020
|volume=34
|issue=7
|pages=645-63
|url=https://www.researchgate.net/profile/Brian-Earp-2/publication/337720859_What_Is_the_Best_Age_to_Circumcise_A_Medical_and_Ethical_Analysis/links/5f815f61a6fdccfd7b555395/What-Is-the-Best-Age-to-Circumcise-A-Medical-and-Ethical-Analysis.pdf
|archived=
|quote=Based on a careful consideration of the relevant evidence, arguments and counterarguments, we conclude that medically unnecessary penile circumcision-like other medically unnecessary genital procedures, such as 'cosmetic' labiaplasty-should not be performed on individuals who are too young (or otherwise unable) to provide meaningful consent to the procedure.
|pubmedID=32068898
|pubmedCID=
|DOI=
|doi=10.1111/bioe.12714
|format=PDF
|accessdate=2025-05-04
}}</ref>