SAN FRANCISCO– 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 circumcision. Query is among a growing number of American parents refusing circumcision, in which the foreskin is removed from the penis. According to a study by the National Health and Social Life Survey, the U.S. circumcision rate peaked at about 90 percent in the early 1960s but began dropping in the ’70s. By 2004, the most recent year for which government figures were available, about 57 percent of all male newborns delivered in hospitals were circumcised. In some states, the rate is well below 50 percent. Experts say immigration patterns played the biggest role in the decline, which was steepest in Western states with big populations from Asian and Latin American countries where circumcision is uncommon. The trend has also accompanied a change in Americans’ attitudes toward medicine and their bodies. ‘The rates of drug-free labor and breast-feeding all rose during the 1980s, while the initial declines in male circumcision rates began during the 1980s as well,’ said […]