c. 2007 Religion News Service

PORTLAND, Ore. _ The Oregon Supreme Court on Thursday (June 21) stepped into a legal dispute between a father’s wish to circumcise his 12-year-old son and a mother’s belief that the procedure is harmful.

James H. Boldt, 60, a former Oregon resident who now lives near Olympia, Wash., converted to Judaism and says he wants his son to undergo the procedure for religious reasons.

Lia Boldt, 44, charges that the boy is afraid to tell her ex-husband that he does not want to be circumcised.

The lower courts have sided with the father, who has custody.

The state’s highest court not only will sort out whether the boy will be circumcised, but also indicated a willingness to take on a broader issue: the long-standing practice of giving great deference to the decisions of custodial parents.

Beyond the legal implications, the case spotlights a surgery that is hotly debated between a small group of advocates even as the practice loses favor across the West. In 1979, 63.9 percent of newborn boys in the West were circumcised, according to the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention. That figure fell to 36.7 percent in 1999.

The Boldts married in the early 1990s. She filed for divorce in 1998. He started studying Judaism in 1999 and eventually converted. The boy initially lived with his mother, but his father later gained custody.

James Boldt, an attorney, did not respond to a message seeking comment. Lia Boldt’s attorney declined to comment.

In court papers, James Boldt claims his son wants to convert to Judaism and is prepared to be circumcised.

Dr. Steve Skoog, head of pediatric urology at Doernbecher Children’s Hospital here, said circumcising older boys for cultural reasons “is a little unusual.”

For one thing, adolescents face a greater risk.

Adults get circumcised with a strong local anesthetic. Infants usually get some local anesthetic, too. But adolescents get a general anesthetic for pain relief and to keep the patient still during the procedure, Skoog said.

General anesthetic adds risk and recovery time to surgeries, he said.

Lia Boldt says in court papers that she wants a hearing to provide evidence that circumcision could cause her son physical and psychological harm. A Seattle-based group called Doctors Opposing Circumcision has taken up her cause.

The debate over circumcision is fierce but confined to select groups.

Opponents say that circumcising most boys is unethical because it is unnecessary surgery. Proponents claim many medical benefits, especially in light of recent studies in Africa linking circumcision to fewer HIV infections.

(BEGIN FIRST OPTIONAL TRIM)

The passion masks the fact that, medically, circumcision is a small-stakes game. The procedure has risks and benefits, but both are relatively minor.

Infections and excess bleeding occur in 1 percent to 3 percent of cases, studies show. Benefits _ lower risks of penile cancer and urinary tract infections _ also are minimal.

The hottest circumcision topic involves sexually transmitted diseases. For years, studies conflicted over whether or not circumcised men had lower rates of syphilis and HIV infection, in particular.

But last year, scientists stopped a U.S.-funded trial early after finding that circumcising adult men in Uganda and Kenya cut their risk of getting HIV from heterosexual sex by about 50 percent.

(END FIRST OPTIONAL TRIM)

The legal implications are bigger than circumcision as well.

James Boldt says a custodial parent has a constitutional right to raise his son in his religion.

Mark Johnson, a Portland family law attorney not involved in the case, said the circumcision dispute raises an important question about the power of custodial parents.

Elective surgery may be an unusual dispute, but an issue that comes up frequently is a custodial parent’s desire to move out of state, Johnson said.

“The historical rule was that that’s what custody means: You make the decisions,” Johnson said. But “judges are now taking a closer look at what custodial parents do. And how far they are going to wade into that is an open question.”

(SECOND OPTIONAL TRIM FOLLOWS)

In the midst of the debate, infant circumcision remains one of the most common surgeries in the United States _ even while the procedure loses popularity.

About two-thirds of U.S. boys have been circumcised at birth since the late 1970s, according to the National Hospital Discharge Survey, run by the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention.

That penciled out to almost 1.2 million circumcisions in U.S. hospitals in 2003, according to another federal body, the Agency for Healthcare Research and Quality.

(Ashbel “Tony” Green and Andy Dworkin write for The Oregonian in Portland, Ore. Researcher Kathleen Blythe contributed to this report.)

KRE END GREEN