Changes

The case started in 2004 when James Boldt, a divorced father, who had custody of his nine-year-old son, decided to convert from Russian Orthodox to [[Judaism ]] and wanted to have his son circumcised in accordance with the [[Abrahamic covenant]]. The son, however, had not converted and did not want to be circumcised. He was supported by his mother in his desire for [[genital integrity]].<ref name="svoboda2010">{{REFweb

She then appealed to the [https://www.courts.oregon.gov/courts/appellate/supreme/Pages/default.aspx Oregon Supreme Court] (OSC) in 2007. It was at this point that [[Doctors Opposing Circumcision(D.O.C.)]] entered the case. [[Doctors Opposing Circumcision (D.O.C.)]] realized that the OSC needed information about circumcision and about the child's rights under Constitutional and international [[human rights ]] law, so it filed an ''amicus curaie'' brief to help the Court understand why it should accept the case. The brief stated in part:

|publisher=[[Doctors Opposing Circumcision(D.O.C.)]]

There is no basis on which the father can hope to prevail in the face of overwhelming protections offered to Misha/Jimmy by the Washington, Oregon, and U.S. Constitutions, and moreover, in face of the protections offered by international treaties, in particular, the [[ICCPR]]. The Supreme Court has stated that "a child, merely on account of his minority, is not beyond the protection of the Constitution." There are no material facts at dispute that require further hearings on the child’s fundamental rights.<ref name="docbrief2">{{REFdocument

|publisher=[[Doctors Opposing Circumcision(D.O.C.)]]

[[John V. Geisheker | John Geisheker]] commented:

Thus ended in victory a five-year legal battle to save a boy's [[foreskin]]. The boy's legal, constitutional, and [[human rights ]] prevailed over the father's claimed religious right to excise a [[Foreskin#Physiological_functions| functional body part]] from his son's body. The father's supporters, the American Jewish Congress, the American Jewish Committee, the Anti-Defamation League, and the Union of Orthodox Jewish Congregations of America were also on the losing side.

[[Doctors Opposing Circumcision (D.O.C.)]] filed two ''amicus curiae'' briefs in this case and was successful in protecting the boy's [[foreskin]] from [[circumcision]].<ref name="docbrief1" /><ref name="docbrief2" />

The US Supreme Court in October turned down a father’s petition in '' Boldt v Boldt''. The boy’s father, who converted to [[Judaism ]] and wants his son circumcised, was unhappy with the decision of the Oregon Supreme Court to determine the wishes of the child, and appealed to the US Supreme Court, alleging the child’s wishes are irrelevant. Fortunately, the right of the boy was paramount in the court’s decision.<ref>{{REFweb

To date, with one known exception, all awards and settlements have occurred in cases involving either a “botched” procedure or a lack of [[informed consent]]. At least three times, courts have avoided squarely addressing the legality of male circumcision by diverting the discussion into such peripheral, procedural issues as standing. Judicial views of standing are politically and culturally shaped in response to social mandates. Although MGC is currently illegal under existing laws and [[human rights ]] treaties, if properly and objectively interpreted free of cultural bias, American cultural blindness has prevented recognition of this. Elsewhere in the world, Tasmania’s Law Review Commission recently released a lengthy issues paper questioning the legality of male circumcision. Sweden has regulated circumcision and the practice was recently made illegal in South Africa, with religious and medical exceptions included that threaten to swallow the rule. While the practice is not otherwise explicitly prohibited anywhere in the world, it is of course illegal worldwide under a broad range of prohibitions imposed by statute, common or civil law, [[human rights ]] treaties, and customary law.<ref name="svoboda2010" />

On two occasions the Court of Appeal in England has addressed the legality of non-therapeutic circumcision performed on a minor unable to provide consent. Both cases involved disputes in post-separation families where one parent sought a male child’s circumcision against the wishes of the other parent. In January 2008, the Supreme Court of Oregon was faced with a similar factual situation in the case of ''Boldt v Boldt''. However, the boy at the center of the dispute in ''Boldt'' was significantly older than in the English cases. The Supreme Court therefore concluded that the testimony of the boy himself, who is now 13, was required and remanded the case for a re-hearing in order that the trial court could specifically address his wishes with regard to circumcision. In this paper, we offer a critique of the Oregon Court’s somewhat elliptical reasoning in the Boldt case. We argue that cases involving male circumcision of older children raise important ethico-legal issues, which the ''Boldt'' judgments gloss over, and which English courts have yet to confront in the context of circumcision. Consequently, our aim in this paper is to use ''Boldt'' as a lens through which to explore and inform UK practice. We argue that this case fits into a characteristic pattern according to which judges, law makers, and professional bodies shy away from confronting key ethico-legal questions raised by the tolerance in Anglo-American society of non-therapeutic genital cutting of male infants. In raising explicitly for the first time the position of older minors, the factual situation in ''Boldt'' affords us an opportunity to begin to address the limits of parents’ rights to determine the future religious identity of their children. In seeking to analyze how ''Boldt'' and the questions to which it gives rise might inform UK law we focus on three issues. The first is the right of the boy at the center of the dispute to determine which medical treatments or interventions to his body are permissible. The father’s subsequent petitions for reconsideration and for certiorari mean that, when the boy’s testimony is finally heard by a court, it is likely that he will be 14 or 15 years of age. We aim to assess how a UK court might respond if faced with the task of determining whether a minor could choose circumcision for himself in such a scenario. A subsidiary question here is the extent to which circumcision procedures are appropriately categorized as “medical treatment.” Finally, we offer some more tentative thoughts on what limits may legitimately be placed on [[parental rights ]] to make choices for their children when their choices are motivated by religious belief.<ref name="fox2010">{{REFweb

|editoreditors=[[George C. Denniston · ]], [[Frederick M. Hodges · ]], [[Marilyn Fayre Milos]]

* The [[Twelfth International Symposium]] on Law, Genital Autonomy, and Human Rights, meeting at Helsinki, adopted the [[Declaration of Helsinki (2012)]], which calls for everyone to have a ''right of [[genital autonomy]]''.