Should circumcision be illegal?

[robvalue]

Little Lunch's question about what the punishment should be is very important here. I think the only hypothetical scenario that would make sense is if it would be considered child abuse and punished as such.

Obviously this would only work if/when enough of society actually does consider it to be mutilation and not some sort of customization, and that this is written into law. At that point no legitimate hospital would be performing them unless it can be shown that there is individual grounds to do so. So someone choosing to get this done on their baby would either be doing it themselves or getting some dodgy doctor to do it. I think it would then be reasonable to call such actions child abuse and to involve social services to either monitor the parents closely from that point, or remove the child altogether.

I can't think of any other punishment that would be practical, if one was to be imposed at all.