A motion to ban the non-medical circumcision of males
younger than 18 has been presented to the Swedish parliament.
Two lawmakers from the rightist Sweden Democrats party,
noting that female genital mutilation is illegal in Sweden, submitted the
motion to the Riksdag on Tuesday. A vote on the motion has not been set.
Bjorn Soder and Per Ramhorn wrote in the measure that “boys
should have the same right to avoid both complications of reduced sensitivity
in the genitals, painful erections, increased risk of kidney damage and
psychological distress by permanent removal, and the tremendous violation of
privacy that circumcision actually means.”
The motion proposes to scrap legislation from 2001 that says
circumcision of newborns is permissible if it is performed by a “licensed
professional.”
Jewish ritual circumcisers, or mohelim, in Sweden receive
their licenses from the country’s health board, but a nurse or doctor must
still be present when they perform the procedure.
The anti-immigration Sweden Democrats party was established
in 1988 but only made it into parliament following unprecedented gains in the
2010 elections, when it garnered 5.7 percent of the votes, or 20 seats out of
349 in Sweden’s parliament. The opposition party is the sixth largest faction
in the Riksdag.
Ritual circumcision of underage boys increasingly has come
under attack in Scandinavia, both by left-wing secularists as well as
right-wingers who fear the influence of immigration from Muslim countries.
The opposition follows a ruling last year by a German court
in Cologne that ritual circumcision amounted to a criminal act. The ruling was
overturned but triggered temporary bans in Austria and Switzerland.
Sweden has about 20,000 Jews and 500,000 Muslims, according
to a U.S. State Department report from 2011.
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