As part of a 16-day protest tour, an advocacy groupcalled the “Bloodstained Men and Their Friends” made a stop in Cape Girardeau on Wednesday.
Their goal? Eradicating infant circumcision.
Press spokesman for the group, Harry Guiremand, said the protest is aimed at showing people that circumcision is “harmful, unnecessary, and an irresponsible, elective surgery done to people who can’t consent.”
“It causes permanent injury, and it’s traumatic,” said Guiremand. “The rest of the world does not do this to their baby boys. It’s only still done in America with the false pretense of medical benefits.”
The group’s attire consists of white jumpsuits and red stains between the legs, and protestors refer to themselves as “genital mutilation victims.”
According to a press release, the Bloodstained Men claim that due to profit and lack of understanding, the U.S. is a “holdout” in getting rid of the “Victorian-era practice” of circumcision. They say the rest of the developed world understands the practice as a “destructive human rights violation.”
Guiremand said they’ve been active for years, but their interest was recently piqued when a federal judge in Michigan declared a female genital mutilation bill unconstitutional last fall.
“We believe he missed the boat in terms that it was unconstitutional for a different reason, and that is that it didn’t provide equal protection under the law for both genders,” said Guiremand.
In the press release, the Bloodstained Men backed their stance with the 14th Amendment, which guarantees equal protection under the law to all citizens. They say despite the amendment, 3,000 baby boys “lose their basic human right to an intact body every day in America, while baby girls are federally-protected from all genital cutting, including a ritual religious pinprick that removes no tissue and severs no nerves.”
The group protested at the intersection of Independence and South Kingshighway from 10 a.m. to 3 p.m. They plan to protest in Carbondale, IL on Thursday, Fairview Heights, IL on Friday, and St. Louis on Saturday, May 11th.