The circumcision decision

As I noted last month, the story about how fewer American parents -- even among the covenant people -- are having their sons circumcised keeps popping up. Yesterday, CNN.com took a not-so-fresh scalpel to the ultimate evergreen story. This lede, however, deserves repeating:

On the eighth day of her son's life, Julia Query welcomed friends and family to celebrate his birth and honor their Jewish heritage.

But there was no crying, no scalpel, no blood, no "mohel" -- the person who traditionally performs ritual circumcisions in the Jewish faith. In fact, Elijah Rose's "bris" differed markedly from the ceremony long used to initiate Jewish boys into a covenant with God: There was no circumcision.

"I knew before I was even pregnant that I would not circumcise," said Query, 39, a San Francisco, California, filmmaker whose son was born in 2002. "It's not like you're just cutting a piece of paper off a pad -- there's no 'cut here' line. It's not made to be cut off, and I would never, ever do that to my baby."