I must say that although I share your views on circ, I dont feel like it is a doulas place to "educate" parents on my way of thinking. There are several conversations on here about this topic and I encourage you to check them out. I believe that parents hire me to provide unbiased information and support during and after birth. To me this mean giving balanced, accurate information about all topics that are of interest to the parent/s. If a family asks me for information about keeping their baby intact then of course I provide that information, but if a family asks for info on how to best care for a newly circumcised boy I will offer that information just as willingly and without judgement.

As a parent I might feel uncomfortable if my doula approached me with a passionate one-sided info session (in attempts to "educate" me) during our prenatal visits. Doulas are about supporting each mother in HER birth, no matter what that might look like. They are also meant to provide information and then step back and support the decisions of the family.

Your message is important and is one that needs to get out there in the world! I would just be careful about blurring the lines between your doula work and your advocacy work.

As an Orthodox Jewish doula, I would have to ask that you respect other's rights to their religious beliefs and do not try to impose your beliefs on others. In the Jewish religion, circumcision is a commandment from G-d that should be respected, just as you would want others to respect your beliefs, religious or otherwise. I would be extremely upset if my doula tried to convince me that my religious belief in circumcision is "child abuse" and "genital mutilation". I have four boys, all circumcised, and while I respect your right NOT to circumcise your sons, if anyone would have tried to stop me from circumcising mine, I would have felt that my rights as a religious Jew had been violated. So please, keep your views to yourself, unless asked for an opinion by your clients. Being a doula is about supporting a woman's choices in childbirth, not about imposing our own on her.

i have several talking points but lets start by remembering that no matter how adamant you are about staying intact or how horrific you think the practice is, and i do! it's not our job to judge. believe me, i never thought i'd say that! i'm a militant "save the foreskin" soldier. i have a take no prisoners attitude. i accept no excuses and don't believe there is ANY rational for doing it. i believe it is genial mutilation and child abuse. BUT having said all that, i've been urged by my husband (also pro intact) to have a compromise position, so, here goes: if you can't save the foreskin, suggest to the parents that they request a "loose" circumcision or that the have it performed by a mohel using a jewish clamp. you can check these out yourselves to save space here. So here are my talking points, and i can say that they've worked:

1. would you circumcise your little girl? of course not. but the same reasons not to apply to your baby boy.

2. circ is an elective, cosmetic, non-medical surgery. there is no medical reason for performing it. therefore, your baby cannot provide informed consent. parents cannot opt for cosmetic surgery for their children. would you take your newborn to the plastic surgeon and ask for a nose job? again, of course not! same reasons apply here.
Um YES parents CAN opt for cosmetic surgery for their children!

3. circing removes up to 70% of enervated tissue from the penis, ask any man circed if they'd like 70% of the sensation returned to their penis? DUH! the most sensitive part of a cired man's penis is the little bit the doc left during the surgery and the scar tissue around the glans. have him check for himself. that bumpy ring around the head? not his, doctor put it there.

4. hospitals make huge profits selling baby boy foreskins to cosmetic and other companies. along with placentas, by the way. they are selling baby foreskins for profit. last i checked, it was illegal to sell body parts. parents are told it's biowaste and will be incinerated. not true! a huge portion of a hospitals income is foreskins and placentas.

Maybe this happens in other countries but NOT in the U.S. It is illegal on many levels not to mention it would be FRAUD for a hospital to sell a placenta that medicaid paid anything for.

5. have the parents go to nocirc.org, click on the link of the video of a circumcision. if they can get through it and imagine that being their baby. well, i'd be speechless and call cps but short of that i'd be concerned about their preparedness for being parents.

Guess what? You have officially met the parent that HAS ordered AND watched the video from nocirc.org and both my sons are circ'd.

6. dad says, i had it done, my dad had it done, i want my son to look like me. you ask "how many times have you seen your dad's penis?" usually the answer is none. what happens if the baby has the wife's eyes or different color hair? "will you be sending it back because it doesn't look like you?" baby's don't need to have matching genitals. if they're having a girl, her vulva will not look like mommy's. but we don't surgically alter it to look like hers, do we?

7. and yes, they did it to you and you survived, but had your mother ever seen an intact penis, did she really know what they were about to do to you several hours after your birth? she probably had no idea and she probably regrets it. have them ask her.

8. explain that the penis is an internal organ, it was never meant to be exposed to the world the way a circed penis is. the clitoris even has a hood. penises are meant to be covered, not exposed. a tremendous amount of sensation is lost from the constant contact a circed penis is forced to deal with. the skin of a circed penis feels like the your elbow or the heel of our hand an intact penis feels more like your lips or eyelid, or sometimes even the inside of your cheek.


9. when the OB performs a circumcision, he does them all the same way (or not depending, on his mood and/or his golf schedule) nonetheless, he has no idea if the penis before him will grow up to be a three inch penis or an eight inch penis, however, he will remove the same amount of foreskin regardless. YAY for the three inch guy, boo for the eight inch guy.

10. cleaning. always a big issue. there is no cleaning an intact penis. it's self-cleaning. you wipe it off like a finger or toe, rinse it during a bath, done deal! as an example, when you change a little girls diaper, do you clean INSIDE her vagina? no, you do not. same thing. no reason to, not necessary. an intact penis requires not maintenance.

okay - guess that's all for now. there's a great publication called "where's my foreskin" that midwifery today publishes. that and a short conversation saved a foreskin the other day! YAY! FIGHT FOR THE FORESKIN!