Erev Shabbos Jewish Blogging (kind of like Friday Cat Blogging, but with fewer cats and more Jews)

[gnomi]

Apparently, Mayor Bloomberg of New York is considering regulating against metzitzah b'peh, which the Times describes as the rite during which the mohel "sucks the blood from the circumcision wound to clean it." When mabfan told me of the Times article, the following exchange occurred:

gnomi: This might be a problem.
gnomi: Just in general.
mabfan: hm
gnomi: I mean, Bloomberg regulating against brisses can't go well.
mabfan: Nope.
mabfan: I have his home phone number if you want to call him
mabfan: He's in the book
gnomi: Heh. "Hello, Mr. Mayor? I don't live in New York, but I think you're going to cause yourself a lot of trouble if you regulate against brisses."

Comments

[somehedgehog.livejournal.com]

From a strictly legal standpoint, I am somewhat surprised that Bloomberg is not invoking existing law to prevent this practice, if he's concerned about it. There is a long-standing legal precedent of the state intervening if they believe that the religious obligations of parents could have repercussions on the health of minor children.

I am not claiming to know what the morally correct thing to do would be in this case, nor am I claiming that I believe the practice carries significant risk; simply that if Bloomberg wants to ban this practice, the legal precedent already exists. I was raised by wolves medical malpractice attorneys, who delivered their share of court orders under that precedent to insist that certain medical procedures be administered to minor children in spite of parental religious objection. I imagine he does not want to offend the religious community, but I imagine it's offensive to have an official statement released declaring a particular practice of a group risky. I imagine if he tries to have it both ways, he may well end up upsetting more people than if he was willing either to ban the procedure as dangerous or openly declare it an insignificant risk.