SMH: CHICAGO: A divorced couple are fighting each other in a US court over whether their eight-year-old son should be circumcised.

The mother wants the procedure to remedy a recurring and painful inflammation she says the boy has endured over the past year. But the father says the child is healthy and unnecessary circumcision could cause him long-term physical and psychological harm.

“I do not want any doctor to butcher my son,” the father said.

The names of the Illinois parents, who divorced in 2003, have not been publicised to protect the boy’s privacy.

In 1999 the American Academy of Pediatrics reversed its support for routine infant circumcision, citing questionable benefits and evidence that circumcised men have less penile sensitivity. But the academy also said there were “potential medical benefits” to circumcision, including a reduction in risk of urinary tract infections……The mother testified this week that she wanted the boy circumcised when he was a newborn but that the father refused. She quoted him as saying at the time: “There is no way my son is going to be circumcised. He is not a Jew.”