I don't think I did a lot of thinking about it. It was actually... I felt like I was actually doing something good, at the time. As a medical student, you do a lot of watching and you don't get to do a lot of participation. It was one of the things they actually allowed medical students to do.
My religious background is Jewish, and so it's very much inculcated into my religious background. But, I didn't really question if it was something that I should be doing or shouldn't be doing. It just felt like it was just a part of my medical practice and I just offered it as a service that was requested.
During circumcision-- I mean, even if you give anesthesia-- some of the babies scream and, you know, they struggle... Some of them do less of that. But its just not a very pleasant experience. Babies are crying and the parents... Some of the parents chose to be in the room; some of them chose to be out of the room. If they're in the room it was usually diffucult for them to be there. Even if they're out of the room, sometimes I'd come out there and the mother would be in tears. This wasn't always the case, but there were certainly enough of those that you could see the parents were... parents had ambivolent feelings about it and it was difficult for them to see their babies in pain.
About a year ago, I finally stopped doing them-- primarily because I just felt like... I didn't enjoy doing the procedure. It was a stressful procedure for both me and my nurse and obviously the babies. And I just-- it wasn't something I enjoyed anymore, and I came to a place realizing that number one, that if parents wanted to have this done, there were other physicians in the community that could offer that and I wanted to be spending my time doing things that I felt more useful than doing circumcisions. So, it hasn't been anything I've missed.