circumcision

The AFP is reporting that Egypt has banned all circumcision for females. This is major news in a country where, despite a past limited ban on the surgeries the vast majority of girls were circumcised anyway.

I'm not entirely clear yet on a key aspect of the ban. The AFP article linked, via Yahoo!, above, contains the following statements which appear to me to conflict:

On Thursday, Health Minister Hatem al-Gabali decided to ban every doctor and member of the medical profession, in public or private establishments, from carrying out a clitoridectomy, a ministry press official told AFP.

and

Any circumcision "will be viewed as a violation of the law and all contraventions will be punished," said the official, adding that it was a "permanent ban".

I began asking people at SexInThePublicSquare.Wordpress.Com to participate in a discussion of male genitals. Specifically, "The Foreskin Dialogues" seeks to get a sense of the range of feelings people have about circumcision. I've now moved this project to the forums here. If you would like to contribute, click here to visit the "Foreskin Dialogues" forum!