Terry Firma

Talk about burying the lede.

ABC News devotes 900 words to explaining that two more babies have contracted herpes through a highly unsanitary circumcision procedure that involves a Jewish cleric putting his mouth on an infant’s bloody penis and sucking away the blood. We wrote about this on Moral Compass a couple of days ago (and prior to that, here).

Incredibly, the ABC editors, in their written coverage, hid the most explosive revelation way down, in the very last paragraph, on page 2:

The health department could take no action against the rabbi who performed the circumcision, because the parents would not reveal his identity.

So: Not only did the Yahweh-fearing couple not bother to prevent its own child from contracting herpes (the circumcision practice, and the virus it transmitted, has already killed two infants, and caused brain damage in two more); Mommy and Daddy feel they must now protect their bloodsucking holy man at the expense of other children who may well die or suffer from lifelong medical consequences.

Future victims galore:

About two-thirds of boys born in New York City’s Hasidic communities are circumcised in the oral suction manner, according to Rabbi David Zwiebel, executive vice president of Agudath Israel of America.

The number of young victims may be under-reported; there are credible allegations from within the Jewish community that hospitals like New York Presbyterian Hospital/Columbia University Medical Center habitually suppress the real number of circumcision-related herpes infections.

Meanwhile, New York City’s Health Department says its hand are tied. The department has been fighting to implement a measure aimed at having Jewish parents sign a consent form for a ritual circumcision. The piece of paper would inform the parents of the risks, and make them acknowledge that they’re aware of what might happen. Never mind that children as young as eight weeks will continue to die even if such forms are presented and signed.

But as weak and ineffectual as the consent-form initiative is, various rabbis oppose it “on religious grounds.”

“This is the government forcing a rabbi practicing a religious ritual to tell his congregants it could hurt their child,” Rabbi David Niederman, executive director of the Hasidic United Jewish Organization of Williamsburg, told ABCNews.com. “If, God forbid, there was a danger, we would be the first to stop the practice.”

Except that they’re fucking not, as more tiny corpses may soon attest.

[image via Failed Messiah]