A sensitive issue

last updated 8 January 2015

Fargo, N.D.

A North Dakota woman has filed suit against the doctor who circumcised her son in 1997, even though she consented to the procedure and nothing went wrong. Anita Flatt, who filed the lawsuit, contends the doctor didn’t warn her about the pain and risks her son faced. “The practice,” her lawyer said, “is absolutely barbaric.” Lawyers for the hospital, MeritCare Medical Center, said the suit was part of a crusade to “abolish” routine circumcisions. In the 1960s, 90 percent of newborn American boys were circumcised, but questions about the medical usefulness of the tradition have now cut the rate to 60 percent. Critics say circumcision is a needless “mutilation” that actually reduces both male and female sexual pleasure.