Man takes on [infant] circumcision (wins suit against Doctor/Hospital for wrongful removal)

Man takes on circumcision as his cause celebre

By Joe Kennedy
The Roanoke Times
Saturday, April 23, 2005

In the fast-paced world of column writing, it's a luxury
to sit down and interview someone more than once before
beginning to tell his or her story.

On Monday, I interviewed William Stowell of Fincastle.
Once was plenty.

Stowell, 23, has become a poster child for the anti-
circumcision movement.

Wednesday night, he is scheduled to appear on Showtime's
"Penn & Teller: Bulls-t!" He will help to debunk the
belief that the practice of circumcision has any social,
sexual, medical or other value. In fact, he says, it does
harm.

It won't be his first brush with the big time.

In recent years, Stowell and/or his personal-injury
lawyer have appeared on "Good Morning America," MSNBC and
other outlets. They and their cause have turned up in The
New York Times, Penthouse and Playboy.

Stowell became attractive to producers and editors in
2003 after a Long Island hospital and doctor settled his
lawsuit against them. The suit questioned the legality of
his mother's consent for his circumcision the day after
he was born.

It said Linda Stowell was weakened by a Caesarean section
and groggy from painkillers when a nurse obtained her
permission for the procedure.

It also questioned the legal and ethical aspects of
removing healthy tissue from a nonconsenting minor for
"non-therapeutic" reasons.

The terms of the settlement are private. There was no
admission of liability, but that didn't stop Stowell's
lawyer, David Llewellyn of Atlanta, from commenting
afterward.

A new niche

"Never again can someone say that a young man who is
dissatisfied with his circumcision as an infant is being
frivolous when he objects to his mutilation and brings
suit to obtain justice," Llewellyn said. "I would expect
that this is just the first of many cases that will be
brought by angry circumcised young men against their
circumcisers."

It is important to note that Stowell's circumcision was
not botched. The "mutilation" described by his lawyer
applies to any circumcision, botched or not.

For more than a year Stowell and, he says, a retired
Alleghany County urologist, have paid for a billboard in
Roanoke. Formerly at Franklin Road and McClanahan Street
Southwest, the message now is on Brandon Avenue near
Deyerle Road.

It faces west, toward Salem. It says, "Today's babies are
born perfect. Parents say NO to circumcision."

On Monday, I met with Stowell at the billboard.

It was the first time I've ever sat with a guy - in his
grandmother's Caprice, yet - and talked at length about
penises.

To put it bluntly, Stowell believes doctors should keep
their circumcising gadgets away from babies.
Circumcision, he says, is the mutilation of an innocent
victim for no compelling health reason.

The decision should be left to the child, not the
parents, he says. Which means, unless there's some
obvious medical benefit, there should be no more infant
circumcisions.

The American Academy of Pediatrics determined in 1999
that the potential medical benefits of circumcision are
not sufficient for it to be part of routine neonatal
care. The academy also acknowledged that the procedure
causes pain to infants and recommended the use of
painkillers.

The AAP did not call for a ban on circumcisions. Parents
choose them for several reasons, including religious and
cultural traditions.

America leads the world in male circumcision rates,
Stowell says, but in recent decades the U.S. rate has
dropped to just over 50 percent of newborns, and lower in
some areas. Partly, this is because of increased births
among ethnic groups that do not choose to have their
newborns circumcised.

Eric Earnhart, spokesman for Carilion Health System, said
veteran nurses in the birthing unit at Carilion Roanoke
Community Hospital have seen little or no change in
circumcision rates for several years.

"Their gut feeling ... is that it's going on at about the
same percentage" as it has for some time.

While Earnhart could not give a figure, he said the
majority of infants born at the hospital get circumcised.

If you'd like to delve into the subject further, you can
e-mail Stowell at NoCircVA@aol.com.

Or you can go online to numerous anti-circumcision Web
sites.

A compelling question

Stowell is 23, married and the father of a 2-year-old
daughter. He receives disability payments for a back
injury he suffered while serving in the Air Force, he
says.

He attends Dabney Lancaster Community College, where he
works as an audiovisual technician. He also drives a
sweeper truck that cleans commercial parking lots.

His interest in circumcisions began during summer camp
when, at age 15, he noticed the foreskin of an
uncircumcised boy in a communal shower.

The foreskin is the loose fold of skin that covers the
glans of the penis.

"It got me to thinking, 'Where was mine?'" he said.

In time, he found Internet sites that address the
subject. He learned the history of the practice and asked
his parents why they permitted him to be circumcised.

"I found out they didn't want to have it done," he said.
"They did it anyway, virtually without my mother's
consent."

He sued and won separate settlements from the doctor and
the hospital, or, rather, their insurers.

And that is how he became somewhat well-known.

Regaining lost ground

Circumcision is "not a parent's choice," Stowell says.
The decision belongs to the person with the penis.

He speaks so authoritatively that I felt a need to ask if
he were a good student in high school.

"I was a degenerate," he said. "I was always getting
suspended for something."

Stowell and others believe that uncircumcised males get
and give better orgasms than circumcised males do.

"Full-bodied orgasms - and often, too," he told me.

They believe their circumcisions rob them of their
rightful portion of sexual pleasure, because the foreskin
contains many important nerves. Once they're gone,
pleasure is permanently reduced, they say. Some men
employ nonsurgical techniques to restore their foreskins,
at least partially. There is equipment that does this.

Stowell is trying to restore his. When we spoke, he was
three weeks into the process. He and his wife already had
noticed an improvement, he said.

Dead serious

The issue of parents' choice prompted me to ask Stowell
how he felt about parental notification laws in cases
where minors seek abortions.

"I don't take a public opinion on that issue," he said.
"I don't want to alienate one group of my supporters by
taking a public stand about that."

Anti-circumcisionists come from many backgrounds, he
said. Circumcision is all that some of them agree on.

I pressed him. He said abortion and circumcision were two
different things.

I said there is a parallel in that both involve parents
in children's medical decisions.

He disagreed.

Abortion, he said, is "a complete extermination of a
being." Circumcision is a "mutilation."

"I don't think one is worse than the other, though," he
said. "Both are crimes against humanity."

Circumcision opponents are lobbying state legislatures to
restrict circumcision or remove Medicaid money for the
procedure, as some states already have done.

The debate has an ugly side. Some Web sites list the
names of doctors and rabbis who perform circumcisions and
label them "the baby mutilators."

Stowell said his Roanoke Valley group has perhaps 22
loosely defined members, most of whom would prefer to
remain anonymous.

He finds it "hard to talk to people around here" about
the subject, but that does not deter him.

"Not a day goes by that I don't mention something to
somebody," he said.

http://www.roanoke.com/columnists/kennedy/22348.html

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As a soon to be new father, I have had the unpleasant
suprise of learning no medical association of any kind
recommends infant male circumcision.

The surprises got worse when I pursued my homework about
just what this 'procedure' actually results in. Mr.
Stowell, I am sympathetic to your cause...

Posted on 5/25/2005 5:12:42 PM PDT by gobucks

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