On the eve of the 203rd anniversary of Charles Darwin’s birthday, lawmakers in at least four states are taking steps to hinder the teaching of evolution in public schools, while other bills would do the same without naming evolution outright.

One of the bills, New Hampshire‘s House Bill 1148, not only singles out evolution, but would require teachers to discuss its proponents’ “political and ideological viewpoints and their position on the concept of atheism.” It is scheduled for a hearing in early February.

The author of the bill, Republican state Rep. Jerry Bergevin, has linked the teaching of evolution to the 1999 Columbine High School massacre and Hitler’s atrocities and associates it with atheism.

“I want the full portrait of evolution and the people who came up with the ideas to be presented,” Bergevin told the Concord Monitor. “It’s a worldview and it’s godless. Atheism has been tried in various societies, and they’ve been pretty criminal domestically and internationally. The Soviet Union, Cuba, the Nazis, China today: They don’t respect human rights.”

In many ways, the debate over evolution mirrors strategies adopted by opponents in the battle over abortion: If it can’t be outlawed outright, critics will at least try to make it more difficult.

Several atheist organizations have called for the withdrawal of all the bills, but are keeping an especially close eye on Bergevin’s. David Silverman, president of American Atheists, has called it “ignorant, infuriating bigotry.”

Ahead of Darwin’s birthday on Feb. 12, other current anti-evolution bills include:

– In the Indiana Senate, a bill would allow school districts to “require the teaching of various theories concerning the origin of life within the school corporation.” That bill has already passed a statehouse committee and was scheduled for a vote on Jan 31.

– The “Missouri Standard Science Act” would require the equal treatment of evolution and “intelligent design,” an idea that the universe was created by an unnamed “designer.” A second bill would require teachers to encourage students “to explore scientific questions, learn about scientific evidence, develop critical thinking skills, and respond appropriately and respectfully to differences of opinion about controversial issues, including biological and chemical evolution.”

– A bill in the Oklahoma Senate would require the state’s board of education to help teachers promote “critical thinking, logical analysis, open and objective discussion of scientific theories including, but not limited to, evolution, the origin of life, global warming, and human cloning” if a local school district makes that request.

– A second bill in the New Hampshire House would require science teachers to instruct students that  “proper scientific inquir(y) results from not committing to any one theory or hypothesis, no matter how firmly it appears to be established.”

– A bill in Virginia would make it illegal for state colleges to require a class that conflicts with a student’s religious views. Critics say that would enable a student to receive a biology degree, for example, without studying evolution if he or she objected to it.

– A second bill in Indiana would require the state board of education to draft rules about the teaching of ideas in science class that cannot be proven by evidence — a clear doorway for the teaching of creationism and intelligent design, critics say.

While all the bills have drawn the attention of several large atheist groups including the Center for Inquiry and the National Atheist Party, Bergevin’s bill in New Hampshire has raised the most eyebrows.

“Evolution is not just for atheists, and has been accepted as fact by many religious institutions, including the Catholic Church,” Silverman said. “It is clearly an attempt to create religious discussion in science class, and to somehow make science ‘not for believers.’”

Even if the bill were to become law, some expect it to be short-lived.

“In the unlikely event it would pass, it would quickly be struck down by the courts as unconstitutional,” said Rob Boston, a senior policy analyst at the Washington-based Americans United for Separation of Church and State.

“It is just warmed-over creationism, which the Supreme Court has already said is unconstitutional, and the government cannot require anyone to stand up and explain where they stand on a religion or a philosophy.”

If the bills stand little chance of surviving, why do they get proposed?

Josh Rosenau, a programs and policy director at the National Center for Science Education, chalks it up to the high number of rookie legislators.

In 2010, he said, “A lot of very conservative legislators got elected who did not necessarily know we have debated these bills before and they did not pass,” he said. “You had people elected as ideologues and they are fulfilling their campaign promises.”

Indeed, Bergevin is a first-time legislator who had wide support from the Tea Party. Still, Rosenau said, Bergevin’s bill is unusual for requiring teachers to discuss a scientist’s religious views.

“Just on its face, I think a court would look askance at it,” he said. “You can’t say, ‘On behalf of the state of New Hampshire I endorse theism over atheism.’”

The bigger picture, Boston said, is the strategy of the bills that do not name evolution per se, like the two in Virginia and Indiana.

“They are smart enough to know that a direct attack on evolution is not likely to survive, so they instead put some kind of penalty on teaching it to make (educators) afraid,” he said.

Inspired by the “Occupy Wall Street” movement in the United States, various groups trooped to the Philippine House of Representatives in late November to demand a vote on a population-control bill that is opposed by Roman Catholic Church leadership.

Holding signs reading “keep your theology out of my biology,” demonstrators from the “Occupy for RH” (Reproductive Health) movement urged legislators on 21 November to “listen to the people and not to the bishops.”

“At Wall Street, they expressed economic dissatisfaction. Here, we’re expressing our dissatisfaction over our reproductive health policy. The lawmakers can’t keep interpolating till kingdom come. They shouldn’t kill the Reproductive Health bill through delays,” Dr. Junice Melgar, the movement’s chief coordinator, told national television on 21 November.

The proposed law promotes both natural and artificial methods of contraception. But the Catholic Church accepts only natural family planning methods and has been opposing the bill.

Supporters such as Representative Walden Bello urged President Benigno Aquino to take a firm stand on the bill and urged legislators of both houses to vote on the bill before this year ends.

Catholic leaders remain undaunted. “Managing population is not as simple as stopping babies from being conceived,” Bishop Carlito Cenzon of the Baguio diocese told ENInews on 22 November.

He warned against the adverse effects of a “contraceptive mentality.” He cited countries with aging populations such as Japan, Singapore and some parts of Europe, where married couples no longer have interest in raising bigger families even if offered economic incentives.

Monsignor Andres Cosalan, vicar-general of the Baguio diocese, also recalled that Singapore had an aggressive birth control program in the 1960s and 1970s.

“The slogan then was ‘Stop at Two!’ There were harsh measures involving the availability of housing and educational services. Singaporeans did stop at two,” Cosalan wrote in 20 November in the Baguio Midland Courier weekly newspaper. The irony, he noted, is that for the survival of Singapore, the government is now asking its people: “Please have four, if not more!” But there have been hardly any takers, he said.

Cosalan told ENInews that as more Filipinos are educated and prefer to marry later because of career pursuits, they also prefer fewer children than many couples did ten years ago. “It won’t be long before we’ll be confronted by the consequences of an aging population … With increased retirement benefits and fewer wage earners, this would be a strain on the national budget,” he said.

Not all Christians are opposed to the bill, which seeks to manage the growth of a population now at more than 94 million.

The National Council of Churches in the Philippines, which groups ten mainline Protestant churches, has supported the bill since 2009 because it promises education and reproductive health benefits to mothers.

Bishop Efraim Tendero, national director of the Philippine Council of Evangelical Churches, the largest network of evangelical Christians in the Philippines, has said the bill “protects the life of both mother and the baby in her womb” and thus described the bill as “pro-quality of life.”

A group of Holocaust survivors went to Capitol Hill on Wednesday (Nov. 16) to push Congress for the right to sue European insurance companies in U.S. courts for denying claims stemming from World War II.

A bill sponsored by Rep. Ileana Ros-Lehtinen, R-Fla., and backed by 52 others members of the House, would allow survivors to pursue such suits despite opposition from the U.S. State Department and prominent American Jewish groups.

Opponents of the proposed Holocaust Insurance Accountability Act of 2011 say such lawsuits undermine agreements already reached between the U.S. and Germany to compensate the victims, and the executive branch’s power to make foreign policy.

They also note that the suits have been discouraged by the U.S. courts.

But the elderly Holocaust survivors who testified before the House Committee on Foreign Affairs Wednesday said they need access to the courts to gain what was stolen from survivors.

“We are not beggars,” said Californian Renee Firestone, who at 19 was deported from Czechoslovakia to the Auschwitz death camp, and lost nearly her whole family in the Holocaust. “Our families paid for these (insurance) policies with the sweat from their brows.”

Ros-Lehtinen, who chairs the foreign affairs committee, argued previous international agreements to compensate Holocaust victims had shortchanged many, and that the dying generation of survivors — now mostly in their 80s and 90s — had a right to pursue what is theirs through their own court system.

She noted that 84 percent of claims made through the international commission to compensate victims, which was disbanded in 2007, had been denied. One in four Holocaust survivors in the United States lives in poverty, she added, citing a study from a Jewish welfare group.

“We cannot deny these individuals the justice they deserve after they have suffered through so much and waited so long,” Ros-Lehtinen said. “We cannot allow these companies to continue to profit from the horror of the Holocaust.”

Also under fire Wednesday was the French national railroad, known as the SNCF, for transporting more than 76,000 Jews and others to Nazi concentration camps. A separate bill, sponsored by Rep. Carolyn Maloney, D-N.Y., would allow victims to sue the rail company, which still exists.

Cramming the elderly, disabled and children into cattle cars, where many of them died without food, water or sanitation, SNCF charged the Nazis per person and per kilometer. Earlier this year, the company apologized for its wartime actions.

Leo Bretholz, 90, told the committee of the night in 1942 when he managed to pry open the bars and jump from a SNCF cattle car after an old woman said he had to escape to tell the world what was happening. Of the 1,000 people on the train, he was one of only five to survive the Holocaust.

“SNCF willingly collaborated with the Nazis,” Bretholz, of Baltimore, told the committee. “In the almost 70 years since the end of the war, SNCF has paid no reparations nor been held accountable.”

SNCF did not respond to an email request for comment.

The two bills have a tough road ahead.

Similar bills have languished in Congress. And major Jewish groups — including B’nai B’rith and the American Jewish Committee — sent a letter to Congress last year opposing a similar insurance bill, expressing concern that it would interfere with other efforts to win compensation for survivors.

In Mexico City, lawmakers have introduced a bill that would allow for two–year marriage licenses.

In the wake of the legalization of gay marriage in the city, the bill is at the center of controversy over family values and the definition of marriage.

Proponents of the bill say that one of the big reasons the bill should pass is that it would stem the tide of divorces that tend to take place there after two years.

The marriage licenses would be renewable if both parties agreed that the marriage was going well. However, if things went South within the two year period, the contract would contain provisions for dividing marital assets.

Leonel Luna, a Mexico City assemblyman who helped author the bill said that the bill is a great idea because people would no longer have to “go through the tortuous process of divorce.”

“Almost 50 percent of couples in Mexico City end up in divorce,” he said. “What we’re trying to do is acknowledge reality and create a mechanism that will allow couples to end their marriage without going through the additional pain and suffering of a legal battle.”

The Catholic Church in Mexico has criticized Luna’s proposal.

“This reform is absurd. It contradicts the nature of marriage,” said Hugo Valdemar, a spokesman for the Mexican archdiocese.

The Rev. Jose de Jesus Aguilar, a spokesman for the Mexican Conference of Catholic Bishops and the Mexico City Archdiocese, has denounced the bill as well.

“Mexico is suffering very serious problems precisely because we’re losing family values. I think that instead of creating all kinds of comfortable rules for political purposes, legislators should focus on promoting strong marriages and family values.”

According to Mexico City vital records, nearly half of the 33,000 couples who wed within the past two years ended up divorcing within two years.

“Religion is not just about what we do on Sunday morning in worship, it’s about how we live and love our neighbor, how we do justice, love mercy and walk humbly with God in our dealings with each other. But the law creates a climate of fear…” says the Right Reverend Henry Nutt Parsley, Bishop of the Episcopal Diocese of Alabama.

“We are people under the law and we have to be obedient to the laws, but laws have to reflect the morality of the culture.”

Episcopal, Roman Catholic and Methodist bishops have joined with civil rights groups to challenge an immigration bill signed into law in June by Alabama Gov. Robert Bentley that has been described as the toughest enforcement measure in the country. The law makes harboring, transporting or shielding undocumented people a criminal offense. Yet faith communities are often transporting immigrants to church, hospitals, and events, while assisting them with food, shelter and school supplies—the very hospitality commanded by scriptures. “Is that against the law?” Bishop Parsley asks. “Is that a criminal act?”

Senator Bryan Taylor (R) claims the law is meant to crack down on employers who are knowingly hiring illegal immigrants and to provide more employment opportunities for the citizens of Alabama, one reason his constituents largely support it. “It’s not illegal for a church to provide a ride for an undocumented alien to go to a retreat, and it’s certainly not illegal to hold a foreign-language church service at which people who happen to be illegal immigrants might happen to attend.” But the bishops are not waiting to see how interpretation and application of the bill’s law actually manifests once it is in effect. The Federal Court has put it on hold, and is currently reviewing arguments both for against it.

Today Odyssey Networks releases an exclusive story illuminating the issues from the perspectives of both the church and the state in our video “The Immigration Debate: Alabama Bishops Unite to Fight Tough New Law.” One vision seeks to dissipate the fear of seeking spiritual and material support for the “least of these”; the other seeks to alleviate the fear of declining job prospects for the 10% of the state’s population who are unemployed.

Watch the story at www.odysseynetworks.org.

Catholic hospitals have joined forces with the U.S. Conference of Catholic Bishops to protest rules in the new health care program of the government, because it may require them to lend free birth control coverage to their employees.

Leaders from the Catholic health care sector and the USCCB have united to seek a broadening of the conscience clause under the rules of the health care program, particularly with regard to religious exemption, because the language used to describe it is too narrow.

Sister Carol Keehan, president of the Catholic Health Association, said in a statement, “As it stands, the language is not broad enough to protect our Catholic health providers,” National Catholic Register reported.

Keehan said, “Catholic hospitals are a significant part of this nation’s health care, especially in the care of the most vulnerable. It is critical that we be allowed to serve our nation without compromising our conscience,” NCR reported.

Keehan’s statement is significant because in the final weeks prior to the passage of the Obama administration’s health-insurance reform bill, she endorsed its passage despite the fact that the U.S. Conference of Catholic Bishops opposed it.

Keehan told the AP that she still supports the government’s expanded health insurance coverage program. However, she believes that the religious exemption clause needs to be widened, and she plans to lobby for its expansion.

Under the government’s proposed religious exemption rule, the clause at issue is the definition of a religious employer, which is described as one who seeks to teach religious values, employs and serves people who share the same faith, and is nonprofit.

The definition does not correlate with Catholic hospitals, which employ some 640,000 people of a range of different faiths without discrimination. It also does not cover educational institutions and organizations that serve disadvantaged populations, including the homeless and the hungry.

Exemption is too narrow

“Although this new rule gives the agency the discretion to authorize a “religious” exemption, it is so narrow as to exclude most Catholic social-service agencies and healthcare providers,” Cardinal Daniel DiNardo, chairman of the USCCB, told NCR.

The USCCB is pushing a bill that will strengthen religious freedom within the new health law, called the Respect for Rights of Conscience Act (H.R. 1179), which was introduced by Reps. Dan Boren (D-Okla.) and Jeff Fortenberry (R-Neb.).

CHA will proffer comments

Keehan, who is with the Daughters of Charity, said the CHA will proffer its remarks to The department of Health and Human Services, which is accepting comments from all concerned parties before it renders a final decision on the conscience clause later this year.

Keehan told NCR, “We will be submitting written comments to HHS and will continue our dialogue with government officials on the essential need for adequate conscience protections.”

Government spokesman Richard Sorian told the AP, “We look forward to hearing from the public as we work to strike the balance between providing access to proven prevention and respecting religious beliefs.”

Christian leaders and heads of other faith groups gathered recently in Washington D.C. to support a bill that will enhance U.S.foreign policy in support of global religious freedom.

The interfaith leaders attended a one-day conference, Stop Religious Persecution Now, at The Washington Times. Addressing the group was Suzan Johnson-Cook, the State Department’s ambassador-at-large for religious freedom.

“Everyone should have the right to believe or not believe,” Cook told the participants, adding, “That is their God-given right,” according to The Washington Times.

Included among the participants were Moslems, Sikhs, Hindus and other religious leaders, lawmakers, government officials, and citizen advocate groups for global religious freedom.

The conference was also designed to rally support for HR 1856, and to form a faith coalition to draw the attention of Congress, media and social networks towards issues of religious persecution.

The bill, authored by Rep. Frank R. Wolf (R-Virginia), will enhance the role of the State Department in advocating global religious freedom.

Also present at the conference was Carl Moeller, president of Open Doors. In his website he said of the event, “[The conference] not only focuses on Christians who face persecution, but people of all faiths who are persecuted for their beliefs. Nearly every global faith is represented at this conference.”

Moeller, in the Open Doors website described HR 1856 as “one of the most important initiatives to promote worldwide religious freedom.” First, because it reauthorizes the US Commission on International Religious Freedom, which monitors religious freedom and makes independent policy recommendations to the President, for seven more years.

Second, it addresses weaknesses in the 1998 International Religious Freedom Act including ensuring that the IRF Ambassador reports directly to the Secretary of State.

Moeller said in the website, “All of these changes are critical to improving the way the US government promotes international religious freedom and helps us achieve our goal of serving persecuted Christians.”

Generally, it was felt that while persecution is not a major problem in the U.S., there is the issue of discrimination.

“The U.S. is surely one of the freest of countries,” Ramesh Rao of the Hindu America Foundation said, “but even we have discrimination problems,” citing problems the group has encountered in seeking permission to build temples in the US, The Washington Times said.

Another speaker at the conference, Hansdeep Singh of the United Sikhs, said that in airports across the country he is often patted down like a “caged animal” at airports before even going through the metal detector because of his turban. “What did I do wrong?” The Washington Times reported.

“The problem is that no faith community is safe,” Tina Ramirez, Becket Fund for Religious Liberty’s director of government relations, said. “You might be the persecutor in one but the persecuted in another. So, unfortunately, religious persecution knows no bounds,” The Washington Times said.

Six churches were attacked recently in Dakar, Senegal, amid protests over proposed constitutional amendments by the government that would have ensured reelection of its president next year.

The attacks, which were primarily aimed at Pentecostal and Baptist churches, are not believed to be motivated by religious conflicts.

Godfrey Yogarajah, executive director of World Evangelical Alliance-Religious Liberty Commission, said in the WEA website that he believes the assaults were intended to take advantage of unrest in the country.

“The protests had nothing to do with the churches that were attacked,” Yogarajah said on the website. “[They] were not spontaneous; they were planned and organized, taking advantage of the protests. How else do you make sense of mobs launching attacks on six churches when there was absolutely no immediate provocation?”

Puzzling

The attacks were described as “puzzling” in the website. Senegal, a Muslim-majority nation, has long been upheld as a standard for tolerance and harmonious coexistence among people of different faiths.

Since June 22 there have been protests when the government of President Abdoulaye Wade tried to amend the constitution through a bill that would reduce the required 50 percent of votes to qualify as president to only 25 percent.

The passage of the bill would have ensured the reelection of Wade, who has already been in power for 11 years, in next year’s polls.

The bill also aimed to include a vice president in the presidential ticket, which would have paved the way for Wade’s son, Karim Wade, to succeed him automatically if he should resign or pass away.

The changes were shelved after riots broke out led by the “23 June Movement,” a collaboration of opposition parties and civil organizations. Some 100 were left injured in the melee.

Aligned with the 23 June Movement is a group of rappers called Fed Up, a youth group, that among other things, is trying to get more Senegalese to register as voters.

Cyrille Toure of Fed Up told AFP, “Between what President Wade has promised, and what he has delivered, it is like night and day. Wade must declare that he will not be a candidate … The constitution and his age do not allow him to run for office.”

Wade, who is 85 years old, was elected president in 2000 and reelected in 2007. Senegal’s constitution only allows a president to hold office for two terms. However, Wade’s party contends that his countdown should only begin from 2007, when an amendment was introduced that lowered the presidential term to five years.

Regarded with suspicion

The churches that were attacked by mobs were largely Baptist and Pentecostal, both of which are experiencing consistent growth in the country. However, some Protestant churches are regarded with suspicion of having alignments with foreign groups, unlike the Roman Catholic Church which is considered a traditional organization in Senegal.

While violence against churches has occurred in the past in Senegal, it has never reached such scale, as Sufi Islam, the majority faith of the Senegalese (at 90 percent), is largely tolerant of other faiths.

The violence has been condemned by Abdoul Aziz Kebe, an Imam of a mosque in Dakar, and an Islamology professor at Cheikh anta Diop University, Assist News Service said.

Appeal for investigation

Yogarajah of WEA urged the government to investigate the attacks on the churches, saying on the website, “It is worrisome that no one, not even the government, has a clue who the attackers were, although the attacks raise many questions.

“Does that mean a section of the Sufi Muslims have become extremist? If so, is a foreign group behind it or some insiders are promoting radical Islam? Who is their leader? What is the strength of this new grouping and what are their plans?” Yogarajah asked on the website.

Yogarajah also appealed to the government to protect religious freedom and to halt any efforts to radicalize local Muslims.

North Korea has been sending recently an increased number of threatening messages to the South due to a law that, if enacted, will be require the North to improve its nefarious human rights record.

The reclusive North has, for many years, been ranked No. 1 for human rights abuse by the watch list of the Christian organization, Open Doors.

The Pyongyang regime said on its website that if South Korea passes a bill that will require the North to upgrade its human rights, then the South will face sure and clear punishment.

The bill has been pending in Parliament since February 2010. It is being pushed by the South’s Lee Myung-bak administration.

However, the South’s progressive main opposition party opposes it, saying that its passage would only further inflame the North and may lead to severed ties, Asia News Network said.

North Korea said it would defer entire communications with Seoul if the bill is passed. Its government-controlled newspaper Rodong Sinmun said it “would be an official declaration that South Korea does not acknowledge (the North’s) dignity, autonomy and socialist system.”

Human rights bill

The bill calls for the following:

• The formation of an independent institution that will be tasked to improve human rights in North Korea.
• The appointment of an ambassador for human rights in North Korea.
• The collection and documentation of cases of human rights abuse in the North for further investigation.
• The enhanced support by the South for the activities of North Korean human rights organizations in the South and globally.

Similar laws are already enforced in the U.S. and Japan, primarily for the purpose of supporting defectors from the North and to promote democracy in the reclusive state.

North Korea has been cited for human rights abuses including torture, unjust imprisonment and public execution, particularly of political prisoners and defectors.

The South’s ruling party has said that it is the responsibility of Seoul to address, through the passage of laws, the human rights situation in the North.

However, the opposition Democratic Party said it plans to propose an alternative bill that will focus on humanitarian aid.

Worsening tensions

Tensions have been worsening between the North and the South of late, most recently with the defection of nine North Koreans who fled to the South due to local instability and food shortages. The North has been demanding their immediate repatriation, but Seoul refused to do so, saying that all nine stated that they wish to defect.

Pyongyang also threatened retaliation upon learning that the military of the South was using the image of the North’s leader, Kim Jong II, and his family for target practice.

Last year, Pyongyang killed some 50 South Koreans in two deadly strikes.

The South deployed missiles earlier this year near the Demilitarized Zone with the capability of striking Pyongyang.

Pyongyang also confiscated and shut down a hotel, spa and restaurants that were formerly run by South Koreans in a northern mountain resort, and recently threatened to dispose of the facilities.

The North and South have been in a technical state of war since 1953 when a truce ended the Korean War.

Since then, over 20,000 are said to have defected to the South despite threats of harsh punishment and death.

The National Association of Evangelicals said in a statement that the move is detrimental to religious liberties and violates the country’s First Amendment.

Leith Anderson, president of NAE said, “Jews, Muslims, and Christians all trace our spiritual heritage back to Abraham. Biblical circumcision begins with Abraham. No American government should restrict this historic tradition. Essential religious liberties are at stake,” CNN reported.

Anderson also said, “The proposed ban violates the First Amendment’s guarantee to exercise one’s religious beliefs,” according to CNN.

While the Jewish and Islamic faiths necessitate circumcision of all believers, not all Christians are required to do so.

The originator of the measure promoting the ban is Matt Hess, who lives in San Diego and is the creator of a comic called Foreskin Man, which has been slammed by critics as being anti-Semitic.

Foreskin Man is a blond superhero who saves a baby boy from the evil, knife-wielding Monster Mohel, a character who wears a traditional Jewish prayer shawl and hat.

In the Jewish faith a mohel performs circumcisions.

Hess has denied that Foreskin Man is anti-Semitic, and claims that the comic is told from the point of view of a baby.

Hess tweeted, “People who forcefully cut the genitals of children are not reasonable. If they were reasonable, they would have stopped doing it by now.”

Hess, through his organization MGMbill, managed to gather 12,000 signatures of support, the number that is required for it to qualify being voted upon in the pending November ballot.

Under the proposed bill it will be “unlawful to circumcise, excise, cut, or mutilate the whole or any part of the foreskin, testicles, or penis,” of any person who is 17 years old or younger.

Anyone violating the law may face a penalty of one year in jail, or be fined a maximum of $1,000.

Sponsors of the bill claim that circumcision wreaks damaging psychological and physical effects on men, not unlike genital mutilation on women.

Many doctors disagree with this, however. Health benefits have been linked to circumcision and complications rarely occur. If ever, they are only temporary and usually minor.

By contrast, World Health Organization has said that there are no health benefits that are linked to female genital circumcision, and in fact there are long-term consequences including higher mortality rates of mothers and newborns, higher incidence of infection, difficulty urinating and fistulas.

Circumcision is widespread in the U.S., with 65 percent of male American infants being circumcised in the hospitals where they were born as of 1999, statistics from Centers for Disease Control and Prevention indicate.

However, while the percentage of circumcisions nationwide remains steady, there has been a strong drop in the West by 64 percent in 1974, and then a 37 percent drop in 1999.