ABSTRACT
Over time, the nature of the debate has changed as the rationales for male circumcision have reflected alterations in the social, religious, and medical contexts. Most recently, the debate has been fueled by the presence of immigrants who engage in female circumcision, a practice that is almost universally condemned by Westerners yet raises the question whether the rationales for circumcising boys are not equally worthy of condemnation. A particularly revealing example of the medicalization phenomenon is provided by the problem of kleptomania. In the late nineteenth century, middle-class women began to be more responsible for shopping for daily household needs. The courts and legislatures of various countries have taken different approaches to the entire issue of male circumcision. A British family court in 1999, faced with a non-practicing Muslim father who sought the procedure and a non-practicing Christian mother who opposed it, blocked the circumcision of their five-year-old boy as contrary to the child's best interests.
