The Absence of No does NOT mean Yes.

If there is one thing I've learned about newborns, it's that they communicate their feelings quite clearly. Unfortunately (for us and for them), we don't speak the same language.

A baby's cry means that something is wrong. I'm too hot, I'm too cold, I'm hungry, I'm sleepy, I'm bored out of my incomplete skull... We get pretty good at interpreting these cries and figuring out what baby needs, but it takes time - time that baby boys can't afford.

Imagine you are warm, safe, happy, maybe a little cramped, but generally content. The next thing you know, after a great deal of pressure, some harsh lighting and cold air on wet skin, you are removed from the woman who has been your home, your safe place, for every previous moment of your existence. This already sounds like a bad day, doesn't it? Like waking up to someone yanking your blankets off in a cold room, perhaps while sitting on your head.

If you're a girl, the story ends with a meal and a nap and some time for bonding with mom and dad. If you're a boy, you're not so lucky. Even though mom and dad love you just as much as they love your sisters, there is a part of your body that is unfamiliar to them. They've been fed inaccurate information that tells them that you weren't put together right in the womb, and you now need to be "fixed" even though all your parts work exactly as they're supposed to.

Of course, you don't understand this. You're a newborn. This is all a bit beyond your grasp right now. All you know is that you were swaddled in mom's arms a minute ago, but now you're stripped and strapped down to what we call a circumstraint. It looks a little something like this:

That's right - there is a special medical restraint made just for infant circumcisions. Kind of looks like what they'd use to strap down a death-row inmate in order to execute him or her, doesn't it?

These run around $300 to $450 each, and it's about $25 to replace the straps after they've been worn out by hundreds of thrashing infants.

But what do you care if a company is turning a profit on the backs of innocent children? You're a baby. You've never heard of commerce. All you care about is that you can't move your arms or legs.

You can't curl up like you're used to, you can't sooth yourself by sucking on your hand, you can't get your mom to come to your rescue no matter how much you scream. Nobody understands that your screaming means "I AM NOT OKAY WITH THIS!" And you don't even know what's coming next, you poor little thing.

First is the betadine swab. They smear it around your penis and scrotum, which is cold and uncomfortable. If you're lucky, the next thing that happens is someone putting a needle inside the base of the most nerve-rich part of your body to inject a local anesthetic into your penis. This itself is painful enough, and it doesn't do enough to block the pain of the next part of the procedure. Next the medical professionals take two metal clamps and put them on the end of your foreskin and pull on it to stretch it out. You're still screaming, and they're not stopping. An instrument is stuck inside your foreskin and used to forcibly separate the fused foreskin from the delicate internal organ inside - the head of your penis. You would probably give anything to go back to a time when the most painful thing in your life was a needle in your penis. You're screaming so much that you're actually choking on your saliva.

This is probably where you go into shock. The pain is beyond your comprehension. It is excruciatingly painful. The pain causes a permanent change in your brain (this is scientifically proven). While your body is still reeling from the shock and pain of having your tender little penis ripped apart, the skin that was there to protect you is cut away and cast aside. You have no idea how much you just lost, but you know something is very wrong.

The pain is so distracting that after being placed back in mom's arms, you're really not all that interested in your next meal. Your sleep patterns and breastfeeding are disrupted because of the pain.  In fact, you're in too much pain to really respond to your parents' attempts to bond with you. You might even flinch when touched, and studies show that you'll probably have a higher pain response to painful stimuli in the future. There are a lot of physical and behavioral issues you and your parents are unaware of just yet. You aren't thinking about sex right now, though you will have to suffer through painful erections while you heal from this surgery, and when you're older you're more likely to have erectile dysfunction. You've lost all the fine touch nerve receptors in your penis, and after time and constant contact with your clothing causes your glans to keratinize, you'll only be able to sense temperature and pressure. Not pleasure.

But you're lucky - you survived. Not all babies do. It doesn't take much blood loss to kill an infant. You could have met a much worse fate.

The fact still stands that if anyone had been listening to you, this wouldn't have happened. Your foreskin was not a ruptured appendix. It wasn't an impacted wisdom tooth. It wasn't a vestigial tail. It was a healthy, normal part of your body, there to serve several functions. Your memory may not include this moment when you're older, but your body will always remember this. You will wear a scar on your body for the rest of your life, and you will never experience the joy of sex as nature intended it.

You said no.
You said it over and over again.
You said it with your body.

You said it with your voice.

Nobody listened.

Let it end here. A language barrier is not an excuse not to listen. Our baby boys are saying no. They are shouting it, they are screaming it, they are begging you to stop the pain. They are losing their lives. There is no excuse for this. There is no reason to keep this tradition alive when so many boys no longer are. There is not a single major medical organization on the planet that recommends non-therapeutic, routine infant circumcision. Not one. It is a cure looking for a disease.

Your son will not always be an infant. He will be a grown man one day. Respect your son and the man he will become by protecting him until he can give informed consent for elective, cosmetic procedures. The absence of the word "no" does NOT mean "yes." If we believed that it did, we'd be no better than someone who rapes an unconscious woman. We would not sit back and condone that violation of someone else's body without consent, but we do it to the most vulnerable of us - a newborn baby. He is saying "no" every way he knows how, and it's our job to listen.

Be your child's voice. Say no to circumcision.