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→Surrogate consent
When the patient is a minor, then [[surrogate consent]] is usually granted by a parent acting as surrogate. There are ethical limitations on the surrogate.
"Circumcision" actually is an irreversible [[amputation]] of a functional body part. In the [[United States]], even babies have legal rights to bodily integrity.<ref>[https://scholar.google.com/scholar_case?case=12998230422916570030&hl=en&as_sdt=8000003&scfhb=1 Union Pac. Ry. Co v Botsford] 141 U.S. 251 (1890).</ref> Circumcision may lawfully be performed only if someone has granted a valid consent for the amputation, however no one has the legal power to grant consent in the absence of a medical indication for a non-therapeutic circumcision. <ref name="hill2003">{{REFjournal |last=Hill |first= |init=G |author-link=George Hill |title=Can anyone authorize the nontherapeutic permanent alteration of a child's body? |journal=The American Journal of Bioethics |date=2003 |volume=3 |issue=2 |pages=16-8 |url=https://www.researchgate.net/profile/George-Hill-3/publication/371599857_Can_Anyone_Authorize_the_Nontherapeutic_Permanent_Alteration_of_a_Child's_Body/links/648b8819c41fb852dd0949be/Can-Anyone-Authorize-the-Nontherapeutic-Permanent-Alteration-of-a-Childs-Body.pdf |quote= |pubmedID=14635628 |pubmedCID= |DOI=10.1162/152651603766436342 |format=PDF |accessdate=2025-09-17}}</ref>
We now understand that surrogates are ethically limited to granting of consent to procedures for diagnosis and treatment of existing disease.<ref>{{REFjournal
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The decision to perform non-therapeutic circumcision belongs to the patient, not the parents.
The Healthy Children Website fails to tell parents that circumcision is a medically unnecessary, non-therapeutic surgical operation that may be deferred until the boy can decide for himself if he wants to sacrifice his [[foreskin]].
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