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→Reduction of practice: Wikify.
A national election was held in the United Kingdom at the end of World War II. The Labour Party gained a majority of the seats in Parliament and its leader, Clement Atlee, became prime minister. The party leaned to the left and supported social welfare. Aneurin Bevan was Minister of Health. [https://www.nhs.uk/ The National Health Service] (NHS) was created in 1948 to provide free medical treatment for all. Services were provided based on clinical need, not ability to pay. The NHS did not provide non-therapeutic [[circumcision]], so the incidence of circumcision dropped to a very low level.<ref name="gollaher1994">{{GollaherDL 1994}}</ref>
Sir [[James Calvert Spence]], a prominent senior British paediatrician, urged his younger colleague, [[Douglas Gairdner]], to produce a paper on infant circumcision. The now famous classic paper, ''The fate of the foreskin: a study of circumcision'', was published in the ''British Medical Journal'' on Christmas Eve, 1949. The paper reported 16 deaths per year from non-therapeutic infant circumcision and concluded in part: "'''The prepuce of the young infant should therefore be left in its natural state.'''"<ref name="gairdner1949">{{GairdnerDM 1949}}</ref>
The NHS provides male circumcision when there was a clinical need.<ref>{{REFweb
|format=
|quote=
}}</ref> The NHS performs circumcisions on boys only for therapeutic need.<ref name="nhschild">{{REFweb
|url=https://www.nhs.uk/conditions/circumcision-in-boys/
|archived=