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Every circumcision causes both [[trauma| psychic and physical [[trauma]] to the patient. Svoboda (2017) considered whether the benefits of non-therapeutic circumcision (NTC) was sufficient to justify the trauma. He wrote:
<blockquote>
As argued here, nontherapeutic circumcision of male minors is not medically justifiable and violates the cardinal principles of medical ethics, including preserving a child’s future autonomy, nonmaleficence, beneficence, and justice. Circumcision should be at least delayed until the affected person reaches an age of understanding and is able to make his own risk-benefit analysis. Notably, the Danish Medical Association issued a policy paper in December 2016 that found NTC before the age of informed consent to be unethical. Physicians’ legal right to operate on healthy children is also questionable. In 2012, a German court held that circumcision constitutes criminal assault by causing bodily harm and denying a child his right to physical integrity, although the decision was later legislatively reversed. And in 2015, in a case involving female genital cutting/mutilation, a British judge found that nontherapeutic circumcision of male children is a “significant harm". As the balance of legal, ethical, and human rights discourse moves steadily against NTC, courts in the US and elsewhere might gradually conclude that NTC is inconsistent with medical professionals’ ethical and legal duties to the child.<ref name="svoboda2017">{{REFjournal