It was a fairly busy OB/GYN service and the interns who did the deliveries were responsible for doing the circumcisions on the newborns the day following. And there would typically be, I would say, ten-- upwards of ten-- circumcisions.
Overall, the procedure seemed, um... [He thinks for a moment.]... odd, inthat the way I began putting it together, you were taking an infant male and the first genital experience that the child was being given was one of pain, and I found that bothersom. And in my own way, I felt it was a little bit unusual to then take this male infant that you'd given genital pain to and put it to the maternal breast. And I felt that it just seemed that we were giving a message to infants that I didn't feel comfortable with.
And I went in to speak with a mother of an infant and asked that she just listen to my little schpiel on the risks and the benefits and she essentially told me that she didn't really care what I had to say; that she just wanted me to do the circumcision and "just do it". Maybe I was tired from a long night, or maybe it was just the right timing, but I just decided then and there that I'd finished doing circumcisions and I wasn't going to do any more, and that if somebody wanted to have their child circumcised, they could certainly find somebody else to do it, but it wasn't going to be me anymore.
I think that in life you just draw line in certain times about things that are important to you or not important to you. You choose things that are important. Sometimes you know that you're making that choice and other times I think you don't really know.