On May 5, the Spiritual Life section carried an Associated Press religion brief with a headline, Convert wants son circumcised, but mother objects. The conflict between a divorced couple, now in the Oregon courts, has been covered in a variety of media, including Newsweek on May 7. Its a fight between parents that comes up often. Alas, too rarely, the right decision is made: Leave it up to the boy because it is his body, his body alone. And dont rush it. Wait until he is old enough to decide.The boy is only known in news accounts as Misha, and he is 12. Because his identity is being protected, his parents named are not made public either. Misha lives with his father, who has sole custody and recently converted to Judaism, whose tradition is to circumcise, although some progressive Jews choose an alternative brit milah where there is only a prick of a pin to the skin to emit blood and leave it at that. The male stays intact as nature intended.The father, who now lives near Olympia, Wash., began studying Judaism in 1999 and eventually converted. The mother, who is Russian Orthodox, previously had custody of Misha. For three years, the two have battled at whether the boy stays whole or not. So far, the father has been winning because he has custody, but news accounts say the courts want to make sure whats decided is in the best interests of the boy.Noted atheist and author of "The God Delusion," Richard Dawkins took up the issue on his web site and called the father’s intentions "religiously inspired child abuse," according to Newsweek. The Portland Oregonian quoted attorney Lawrence Goring, Youre talking about not just religious instruction or whether youre going to send the child to parochial school or public school. This is a matter of permanent change of bodily structure. The father had first made an appointment in 2004 to have the boys foreskin snipped, but the mother responded by going to court, saying her son told her that he was afraid to defy his father, but didnt want the procedure.Doctors Opposing Circumcision, based in Seattle, have been make it a cause celebre on the Internet and attracting donations to help the mother press her case in the courts. According to Newsweek, DOC posts a list of rabbis nationwide who will perform a religious ritual welcoming boys into the world without cutting. An attorney, working pro bono, has donated more than $20,000 in legal fees to try to get the circumcision blocked in the courts. Unlike some previous father-mother legal fights over circumcision, neither side here argues there are any foreskin medical issues that call for it being performed. This is the clearest case of a parents claimed religious beliefs trumping a childs right to an intact body that I have seen in 26 years of practicing law, said John Feisheker, an attorney and executive director of DOC. It fairly screams out for justice, but justice costs even when most of the legal help has so far been provided pro bono." www.doctorsopposingcircumcision.org/info/appeal/html.DOC worked hard in a similar case in Cook County, Ill., where last October, the judge settled a similar dispute between a divorced couple in favor of leaving the boy intact. The mother wanted their 9-year-old circumcised, claiming he needed it because of infections under his foreskin. The father objected, saying the mother had wrongly retracted the foreskin in order to clean underneath and had irritated the area, according to Reuters. The judge said there was no clear evidence that the boy would benefit from being cut and said he could decide for himself when he turns 18 and is an adult.Heres hoping Misha also gets to decide for himself. Judaism itself has been deeply conflicted about circumcision, troubled by instincts of humanity versus tradition. The extent of its practice and acceptance among Jews has varied widely through the centuries. Its documented in books like Questioning Circumcision: A Jewish Perspective by Ron Goldman to Marked in Your Flesh: Circumcision from Ancient Judea to Modern America by Leonard B. Glick. Jews have been at the forefront of producing books and articles calling for all circumcisions to end on human rights, medical ethics and cultural enlightenment grounds. May the Oregon court show the same enlightenment.

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