Monday, June 27, 2011

Free exercise rights end where another’s body begins

Spot on Mr Flynn:

Leave aside the question whether it should be described as mutilation; leave aside the question whether circumcision has incidental health benefits or risks. It’s a surgical procedure whose mark the recipient will carry for life, but had no meaningful chance to opt in to or out of. In other words, infant circumcision is something a secular society would never allow if it weren’t associated with religious traditions.

[...]Banning circumcision raises church-state issues, to be sure, as it forces society into the declaring certain sacred practices illegal. To me, however, aggrieved believers’ free-exercise rights end where another person’s health of bodily integrity begins.

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