Extreme False Pregnancies- "I'm Three Years Pregnant With An Invisible Baby"

I know firsthand how heartbreaking false pregnancies are. After a loss in 2013, I continued having symptoms for three months afterward—amenorrhea, colostrum, nausea, weight gain, and even faint positive pregnancy tests. It wasn’t until a blood test found that the HCG levels were non-viable that my brain and body finally accepted that it was over, and the symptoms disappeared. False pregnancy feels real. I understand how jarring it is when your brain tells you that there is no baby, but your heart and body insist that there is.



So, when I saw a couple in a parenting group on Facebook saying that they were “certain” they were pregnant even though their tests were negative, I warmly explained that false pregnancy isn’t uncommon and that I wished them better luck next time. Then I heard them make some claims that were so outlandish that I prayed they were joking.


You see, they were “certain” that she was not just a little bit pregnant—they said she was full-term, and in early labor. They also said that they had never had a single positive pregnancy test and that all of the ultrasounds showed that her uterus was empty. They said that the mom-to-be had been having periods every 30-45 days. They said that the doctors and midwives they saw were “denying” the reality of their pregnancy. They posted photos of empty ultrasounds and negative pregnancy tests, swearing that they could see a full-term baby and a positive line on the tests. And here’s the kicker: they said that the baby was a miracle, since the father does not have testicles and can not possibly produce sperm.

This couple was deep in the throes of not just a false pregnancy, but a profound and disturbing psychotic delusion. The worst part is that they weren’t alone. I found an entire culture of medicine-denying, science-denying women and couples—all of them anticipating unassisted home births, since doctors are not to be trusted—who believe that they are experiencing pregnancies that are full-term and beyond, even though they have few or no signs of pregnancy and doctors tell them they are not pregnant. They call these “cryptic” pregnancies, which in mainstream medical language refers to pregnancies that the mother is unaware of. In this strange subculture's language, it means a pregnancy with absolutely no signs or symptoms except the mother’s psychic knowledge.



Self-proclaimed cryptic pregnancy expert Anne R. Wicks states that, “Many of the women experiencing cryptic or stealth pregnancies are highly aware, intuitive or psychic,” and says that actual false pregnancies are extremely rare and only “occasionally” psychological in origin, and that when they happen, it’s the body’s way of protecting against an abusive husband. Ms. Wicks insists that most people with pregnancy symptoms and no visible baby are actually pregnant with these magical “cryptic” fetuses. When they’re not born after weeks, months, years? Well, Wicks says, you can be pregnant with a cryptic baby for up to five years. Don’t let anyone tell you you’re not pregnant just because you’ve been “pregnant” for years without peeing positive.



Wicks’ ideas about magical five-year gestations are far from uncommon, which is frightening. The Gilmour Foundation, which is run by another self-appointed expert in cryptic pregnancies, states that these hidden babies always take years to gestate: “You will be pregnant with a cryptic baby longer than 40 weeks. None of these babies have been born before 17 months and some have gone as long as three or four years.” And labor from a cryptic pregnancy, she says, “lasts for months” and is extremely painful, but you shouldn’t go to the hospital because those evil doctors and their evil science will tell you that it’s not real and will refer you for psychiatric treatment.


 With this kind of advice, it’s not surprising that cryptic pregnancy support groups are filled with women talking about being years into pregnancies that their doctors are denying the existence of. In one Facebook support group, which openly supports freebirth and condemns the “birth industry” and the use of, y’know, professional doctors and midwives, women share their stories and photos of their “baby bumps” that look suspiciously like good old-fashioned obesity.



 One woman in the group says that she is 85 weeks pregnant.

 Another says that she has been pregnant twenty times with babies that doctors could find no trace of.

The consensus seems to be that gaining weight or worsening posture are foolproof signs of pregnancy, even when the woman has been “pregnant” for a year and a half.

The Gilmour Foundation warns these women that they’re in for a world of stress and mistreatment if they seek medical attention:


“You will be told that the fetal movement you feel is gas, IBS, your bowels moving, your abs moving, worms, a parasite, cysts, fibroids, constipation, muscle spasms, the list goes on.


You will be diagnosed with IBS, gallbladder issues (they may even try to take it out), celiac disease, cysts, fibroids, UTIs (urinary tract infection),  a systemic infection, PCOS (poly cystic ovarian syndrome),  pre-mature menopause,  menopause, peri-menopause, thyroid issues, and of coarse the famous “phantom pregnancy” this list goes on as well. They may even try to take out your ovaries and give you a total hysterectomy. 



 If you continue to push the issue with the same doctor or hospital, they will try to intervene and make you seek help from mental health professionals.  Women have been given “Interventions” by their Obstetricians and a Psychiatrists. 


 If you show them how your belly is growing, they will tell you that you are just fat and you need to stop eating gluten and sugar. 


 It will make no difference how you look or what you say, they will not believe you or help you as long as your blood tests are negative.  


 The people you know will not believe you and if they do, when you go over 42 weeks without delivering, they will stop. You have to be VERY careful about who you tell and how many people you tell. No one believes a pregnancy can go so long.



You will have to plan on delivering at home with out help. You can go to the ER when you do go into labor, but if you are not dilated enough to where they can see your baby in your cervix, they will do a pregnancy test, tell you that you are not pregnant, and send you home. This has happened often and this is why you MUST have a back up home birthing plan. You may not want to deliver at home, but you may not be given a choice.  DO NOT put yourself in a situation where you are turned away from the hospital and you have no information on unassisted delivery.  You MUST have a back up home birth plan. Please educate yourself as much as possible on unassisted delivery and home birth."

(Un)fortunately for these medical conspiracy theorists, there’s plenty of support to be found through the many informative mommybloggers who have shared their stories.


Crypticpregnancy.com collects the stories of the many women who are going through this, so they all know that they are not alone. Conspicuously absent from these collections are stories that end in births. 

So what happens when these women, years into their invisible pregnancies, don’t give birth? Well, that’s where my research turned from worrisome to deeply disturbing.

A  few women who believe in these magical invisible fetuses eventually realize that they were wrong and that there is no baby. The “pregnancy” blog of Becky Done, who was highly involved in the community and referenced often as a “real” cryptic pregnancy, eventually realized after a detailed abdominal CT Scan that she was suffering from a false pregnancy. She concluded her blog “amipregnantornot” with a heartbreaking, brave, and honest post that ends with a message for other women in her situation:


 “If you do find out that it is a false pregnancy, please know that we can recover from this. I have always relied on my logic and reason to guide me through life and even though my confidence is at an all time low and my grief is off the charts, my logic and reason tell me that help is available if I apply myself and that I will find love again if I prepare myself. With that in mind, I will sign off for now. I will write and update with anything significant, but I am going to focus on healing and moving forward with my life. I hope I have been some assistance to those of you going through this experience.”


Becky says that she is pursuing counseling and realizes that she still has a lot of life left, and although the grief is hard, she has accepted that her baby never existed. But many women’s stories don’t end so well. Theresa Porter, a clinical social worker, found at least 21 cases in the last 25 years of women in the U.S. who, in the throes of extreme false pregnancies, murdered moms-to-be in order to steal their unborn babies.


In the most famous case, Lisa M. Montgomery, a woman who was suffering from an “extreme pseudocyesis delusion” according to a neuropsychologist who treated her, strangled a pregnant mother and cut a premature baby from her womb. She is now on death row.


 Dozens of high-profile kidnap cases have involved women breaking into homes and even sneaking into hospitals in order to steal newborns from their mothers. Also often identified as part of “pregnancy fraud” on part of the mother, in many cases, such as that of Rayshaun parson, the kidnappers are sometimes themselves suffering under the delusion that they are pregnant, and seem to be to some degree unaware of their actions.



There’s a point to me bringing this disturbing trend to light. It’s not just to share something I stumbled upon in that weird part of the internet—it’s also to give an example of just how detached from reality people can become, particularly when encouraging each other in forums on the internet.

The web has become a breeding-ground for pockets of people who encourage each other’s shared delusions. I myself nearly got pulled into one of these pools when I first became a mother and believed the culture of “online mom friends” who told me, and each other, that vaccines caused autism, that fluoride was deadly, and that pediatricians are out to get rich by making kids sick. I denied science and evidence in favor of herd mentality and comforting lies. In that way, I’m not so different from the mothers who convince each other that they are five years into invisible pregnancies. I figured out my mistake. I hope that the rest of these women figure out theirs, before they or someone else become irreparably harmed.

12 Things the Anti-Vaccine Movement Got Wrong

I know the anti-vaccine movement like the back of my hand, because I used to be part of it. I believed nearly every lie they told, because the story they created-- one in which "childhood illnesses" were no big deal, and in which I could keep my kids safe with crystals and kale-- was comforting. But the more research I did (real research, from reputable sources) the more I found out that the anti-vaccine movement's most sacred lies were flat-out wrong. Here are ten of the worst, and most easily disproven, lies told by the anti-vax movement.

1. Myth: Vaccines contain aborted fetal tissue.
Fact: They don't, and never have.

Vaccines have never contained the tissues of aborted fetuses. The only tiny grain of truth in that claim is that aborted fetuses, from pregnancies terminated over fifty years ago, were used to cultivate cell lines that are still used today to manufacture vaccines. The cells have divided trillions of times since the original fetuses died. This is nothing new: cell lines are used all the time in medicine. Henrietta Lacks, who died in 1951, still has living cells that are still saving the lives of people daily. However, no trace of fetal tissue is present in vaccines, nor is there any trace of human DNA in vaccines. Even those who oppose abortion should not oppose this use of embryonic cells: not only have fetuses never been aborted for the purpose of using them in vaccines, but the MMR vaccine has saved the lives of hundreds of thousands of fetuses, since rubella was once a leading cause of fetal death. I also doubt that most vaccine opposers would decline an organ transplant from a murder victim just because they ethically opposed the person's cause of death.

2. Myth: Disease rates have gone down because of improved hygiene, not immunization.
Fact:  Sanitation does not explain the decline of vaccine-preventable ilness.

There's actually evidence that improved sanitation caused outbreaks of polio. Safety protocols like handwashing and clean water are important, but that doesn't mean that vaccines aren't a necessary and causative factor in reducing disease. Most animals still live in the same degree of filth (or worse) compared to 300 years ago, yet we've seen diseases affecting them be eradicated or nearly eradicated. Rinderpest, which infects cattle, is the second disease after smallpox to be completely eliminated. To this day, ninety-nine percent of cases of rabies are caused by dog bites in areas with low immunization rates, but almost none occur in countries with mandatory vaccination of pets. If improved sanitation were the cause, I think my dogs missed the memo that it's now passe for U.S. dogs to lick their butts.

3. Myth: Today's vaccine schedule contains way more diseases than ever before.
Fact: Today's vaccines protect against more diseases than ever, but with less exposure to actual viruses and bacteria.

Science has refined vaccines so that children's immune systems can build a response to bacteria and viruses, without actually needing to be exposed to live or whole-cell germs. The American Academy of Pediatrics points out, "Although we now give children more vaccines, the actual number of antigens they receive has declined. Whereas previously 1 vaccine, smallpox, contained about 200 proteins, now the 11 routinely recommended vaccines contain fewer than 130 proteins in total. "  In other words, we expose kids to fewer bits of germs in eleven vaccines today than we did in just one vaccine a hundred years ago.

4. Myth: Too many vaccines at once will overwhelm the immune system. 
Fact: Vaccines can't and don't "overwhelm" the immune system.

Not only is there much less to react to than ever before, but children's bodies are very resilient and can tolerate receiving many vaccines at one time or in rapid succession. Kids are exposed to hundreds of germs on any given day, but we don't worry that they will be "overwhelmed" by germs crawling on the monkeybars at the playground. The AAP also points out that the side effects from a single vaccine given by itself are about the same as the side effects from six at one time. Why make your child suffer the same uncomfortable reaction six times when his immune system could tackle them all at once?

5. Myth: Vaccines "shed" and can sicken those who are around a recently vaccinated person.
Fact: Only two standard childhood vaccines can possibly cause "shedding" and the risk is infinitesimal.

Vaccines can only "shed," or spread viruses and bacteria to the people around the recently vaccinated person, if very specific circumstances are met, and they almost never are. The only vaccines that shed are live vaccines, and only two live vaccines are typically given to children in the US, the rotavirus vaccine and the chickenpox vaccine. Rotavirus only spreads post-vaccination if an immunocomprimised person touches the recently-vaccinated baby's poop and then doesn't wash their hands. Chickenpox only spreads post-vaccination  if a child is one of the very few people who develops a mild chickenpox infection from the vaccine, and if an immunocomprimised person who has never caught or been vaccinated for chickenpox touches the rash. How often does this happen? Well, it's only been recorded five times with chickenpox out of 55 million vaccines administered. So the odds are roughly one in eleven million and only apply if someone is immunocomprimised and plans on touching baby poop or chickenpox rashes. And, by the way? Those five people who caught shed chickenpox had very mild infections and were fine.

6. Myth: Vaccines are injected directly into the bloodstream.

Fact: Vaccines are injected into muscle tissue.

People who claim that vaccines are dangerous typically point to the idea that we don't know what effect "chemicals" might have on children if those chemicals are injected directly into a child's bloodstream. Well, there's good news on that: not a single vaccine is administered intravenously, and never has been. Vaccines are injected into muscle tissue, where they are absorbed a bit more gradually (that's why your child might have a little bump at the site of the injection). Vaccines never enter a child's bloodstream directly.

7. Myth: Vaccine-preventable illnesses are almost always mild.

Fact: Most vaccine-preventable illnesses are very serious, and all can cause death.

Every mother wants to believe that so-called childhood illnesses are just a fact of life, and a harmless one. But they're not. Let's look at diphtheria, for example. My grandmother's sister was one of the 1 in 5 victims of diphtheria who succumbed to the disease. Over 28% of children under five who contract measles need to be hospitalized, while anywhere from 11-78% of people with tetanus die. The worst is rabies, which claims the lives one hundred percent-- that's right, one hundred percent-- of people who are exposed who aren't quickly vaccinated against the disease. Even if all these diseases really were harmless, they are in the very least unpleasant. Why make your children suffer when it's preventable? Vaccine-preventable diseases are a big deal.

8. Myth: Vaccines contain mercury.

Fact: The standard children's immunization schedule has not contained mercury since 2001.

Children's vaccines used to contain thimerosal, a compound that contains mercury. It was an important ingredient because it prevented fungi and bacteria from growing in vaccines and causing serious side effects. Although there was never any evidence that thimerosal caused autism or other adverse effects, it was withdrawn from all children's vaccines in the United States in 2001 as a precaution. It remains an ingredient in the flu shot but is no longer present in any other recommended childhood vaccines. Yet rates of autism continue to increase. 

9. Myth: Most people who catch vaccine-preventable diseases are vaccinated.
Fact: Not really, and that doesn't matter.

Someone failed Statistics 101. It is true that, in some cases of disease outbreaks, a fair number of vaccinated people have gotten sick. This is no surprise to anyone: everyone knows that vaccines don't prevent 100% of cases (which is why herd immunity is so important). But the thing to bear in mind is that a tremendously disproportionate number of people who are unvaccinated get sick.  Think of it this way: out of a hundred kids, let's say six aren't vaccinated. Five unvaccinated children get sick, while ten unvaccinated children get sick. It's true in this casethat most of the sick kids were vaccinated, but it's also true that being unvaccinated correlates with getting sick. This is the way the statistics have played out in every VPD outbreak in modern history. This is basic knowledge that was discovered and taken to heart when vaccines were developed.

10. Myth: Death and autism are listed as vaccine side effects on the package inserts, so they must be real side effects.

Fact: Death and autism are not side effects of vaccines, and the package insert doesn't change that.

Vaccine manufacturers are required by law to include all possible side effects of their vaccines on the package inserts, including those that were not confirmed by actual scientific research. The Vaccine Averse Event Reporting System, or VAERS, is the FDA's method of collecting anecdotal reports about vaccine injuries. In other words, anyone can file a VAERS report saying whatever they want. If a parent has a child who is diagnosed with autism months or years after a vaccine, she can report it to VAERS as a side effect. The same is true of the exhaustive list of other VAERS reports, which include things like "automobile accident" and "drowning." Dr. James R. Laidler illustrated this by submitting "Turning into the Incredible Hulk" as a vaccine side effect (and was approved!). Anyone can report anything to VAERS. That doesn't make it valid science.

11. Myth: If your kids are vaccinated, you shouldn't care whether or not mine are.

Fact: Yes, I should.

For one thing, I don't want your kids to die. The fact that they're not my kids doesn't mean I don't care about their safety. I have been a scared anti-vaccine mom before, and my children survived my mistakes, but I am upset by stories of other parents making the same mistake I did and not being so lucky. Furthermore, when you don't vaccinate your children, they become carriers who can infect people who can't be vaccinated: infants, the immunocomprimised, the elderly, and those with genuine allergies to vaccine ingredients. These people are at a very high risk of dying from vaccine-preventable illnesses, and you are to blame if your children transmit them.

12. Myth: People who support vaccines are shills paid by Big Pharma.

Fact: We are real people and we aren't being paid.

I have been a vaccine advocate for four years. I have been featured in national and international news. I have had millions of views of my articles about vaccine advocacy. And I haven't been paid a single dime. My "real" writing career isn't spent advocating for vaccines because there is no money in this. The one time I was contacted by a pharmaceutical company about giving a speech, they apologetically explained that they were not legally allowed to compensate me. This is a labor of love, and there isn't much (if any) money in it for me. The same is true of every other vaccine advocate you know: your doctor, your friends, your online enemies. We do what we do because we care, not because we're out to get rich. I am a vaccine advocate because I care about children's lives.

Why Trust Vaccines if Pluto Isn't a Planet?

After the tragic death of baby Thalia Vida Gardner, I was hit with a number of attacks from anti-vaccine and anti-science activists, who claimed that her death—ruled by the hospital as shaken baby syndrome—was in fact a vaccine reaction. All of the comments were dangerous. Some of them were infuriating. A few were down-right hilarious.

It takes a lot to be able to laugh at anything when you’re in the middle of a discussion about a dead baby. But somehow, a warrior against science by the name of Matthew Amore managed to get me to do it. He posted:

“When people are single minded, there is no point in conversing with them. People are so easy to say that science is right, and trust these people.. And that's fine.. I just would never live like that. I make decisions because I want to, not because I am told to. Science is NEVER wrong.. Remember the planet Pluto?"

In other words, Mr. Amore doesn’t trust science because it’s sometimes wrong. Or: “How do you know that vaccines are safe, if Pluto isn’t a planet anymore?”

It’s not a question that deserves an answer, or at least, that’s what I told myself at first. And then I remembered that there was a time when I had similar thoughts. I was anti-vaccine once upon a time. I was ignorant, but I wasn’t stupid. My reasoning was that cover-ups and bad science had happened before. For centuries, otherwise-intelligent scientists believed that lead pipes were safe. At one point, cigarettes were prescribed as a treatment for asthma. Men of science once believed in humors, and in blood-letting, and in astrology. As Matthew Amore pointed out, scientists classified the dwarf planet Pluto as a planet beginning from 1930 to 2006.

With scientists being wrong about so many things, was it really so far-fetched to believe that today’s scientists could be wrong about vaccines?

Was it really so hard to believe that science, as a construct, might be flawed, and that the answers to health and sustainability might lie not in laboratories and universities, but in crystals and plant oils?

No. It wasn’t. And that’s why so many people, like me, fall for it when people question science. We know it’s been wrong before. We know it can be wrong again.

But here’s what it comes down to, and what turned me from a “fence-sitter” who bought into pseudoscience, to a skeptic and rational thinker. When science has been proven wrong, it has always—every single time, with no exceptions—been proven wrong by more science. Every time there has been a mistake or misunderstanding within the scientific community, it was found out by brilliant researchers working together using the scientific method. It has never once been proven wrong by a spiritual vision, a surprise visit from a deity, or an act of magic.

Am I willing to accept criticisms of currently accepted science? Oh, yes, absolutely. Changes and criticisms are the foundations of science. Scientists love to wonder and love to have questions with no answers. They love to search, and research, and experiment. So, when I see a headline about a groundbreaking new study carried out by leading scientists, you can bet your bottom dollar that I’ll be the first to read it and analyze it. Sometimes it will be a good study and sometimes it will be one of the bay studies that passes peer review. If it’s a good study? Great, let’s look into it some more. If it’s a bad study? Also great. Let’s pick it apart in skeptic forums and find out how to repeat the research.

However, that doesn’t mean that I’m going to be interested in reading or analyzing things that are fundamentally not science. “Ohio Grandma Finds the Miracle Cure for Eczema!” with no researchers backing her supposed claims, isn’t science. “Natural News Reveals 30 Ways Vaccines Can Kill You!”, based on anecdotes from Facebook, isn’t science. “How Reflexology Can Cure Your Depression,” without a single citation of peer-reviewed evidence, isn’t science. And, Matthew Amore: when the internet goes wild blaming a baby’s abuse-related death on vaccines, when no medical experts back the diagnosis of vaccine injury made by his alleged abusers, that’s not science, either.

I don’t doubt that the day may come when we find out that some things about conventional medicine are harmful. In fact, we’re already seeing some of it. The overuse of antibiotics (particularly in livestock) in past decades has created an epidemic of antibiotic-resistant bacteria. The over-prescription of addictive narcotics has created an entire subculture of addicts, and of physicians who enable it. The medically unnecessary use of cesarean section has caused some women to undergo the complications of surgery when it wasn’t wanted or warranted. These are issues that are real, and they may, one day, look just as primitive to medical experts as blood-letting looks to us now. But at the end of the day, solutions aren’t going to come in the form of quacks selling herbs from their garages. They’re going to come from leading scientists who practice science.

Can science be wrong? Yes. When it is, it’s proven wrong by logic and reason. If you can give me evidence, using logic and reason, that vaccines are dangerous, we’ll talk. If not, I’ll keep vaccinating my kids.

Even if Pluto isn’t a planet anymore.

5 Lies Intactivists Told Me

The decision not to circumcise my son wasn’t one that I took lightly. It involved deep introspection and careful evaluation of the science on both sides. It also meant breaking myself away from herd mentality: both my Jewish background, which strongly encouraged me to circumcise, and my involvement in the communities of gentle parenting, which strongly encouraged me not to circumcise. Eventually, just a few months before my son was born, I decided not to circumcise him. What it boiled down to was this: I can’t justify a permanent alteration of the body of someone who can’t consent, unless there is irrefutable scientific evidence of the benefits of doing so.

That evidence exists for vaccines. It does not exist for circumcision.

But, unfortunately, as with all too many factors in “crunchy” culture, I found that “intacvitist” communities on the internet were positively overflowing with misinformation and pseudoscience. Here are the five most ridiculous lies and statements I encountered during my misadventures with intactivism:

1. “Circumcision of newborn boys is just as bad as female genital mutilation, or worse.”

What a way to insult survivors of FGM! There are different forms of femalegenital mutilation, but they all share several traits in common: they are absolutely condemned by science, they cause severe and irrevocable damage to sexual function and urogenital health, and they have no medical benefits whatsoever.  Circumcision, on the other hand, has the intended goal of promoting human health. Girls who are mutilated are often strapped down so hard that they break limbs trying to escape, while elders cut off their labia or clitorises with sharp and rusty razors. They often bleed to death or die of infection. If you think a baby boy snipped in a clean American hospital is a victim on the same level, you need a fast and serious reality check.

2. “Circumcision is a modern invention. Circumcision in ancient times didn’t even involve removing skin. That’s why Michelangelo’s ‘David’ and paintings of baby Jesus show foreskins.”

If we assume that Renaissance artwork can be counted on as historically accurate, it would follow that unicorns must be real and that people had  habit of standing around near objects that were symbolically appropriate to every occasion. “David” and historical paintings of Jesus show foreskin because Renaissance artists used non-circumcised models and because it was considered more aesthetically pleasing at the time. Circumcision is absolutely ancient: there is artistic and written documentation of it as far back as the fifth century BCE in ancient Egypt, and is specifically commanded and described in the Torah, which was written during roughly the same time period. Rewriting history to fit an intactivist agenda doesn’t help anyone.

3. “Babies die from circumcision every single day in the U.S.”

Bull. Death from circumcision is extraordinarily rare, estimated at about 1 in500,000 to 1 in 1,000,000. Your baby’s chances of dying of circumcision are slim to none, yet it’s a common intactivist tactic to make up bogus statistics. Some that I’ve heard include, “Your baby has a 1 in 50 chance of dying of circumcision”—really?—and “A baby dies from complications of circumcision every 10 minutes.” Nope, not at all. Sorry, guys, but you can’t make up statistics just to sound scary.

4. “Circumcision destroys sexual function. Men who are circumcised have 80% less sensation than men who are not circumcised.”

Just how do they think that was measured, I wonder? All evidence to date actually shows that circumcision has essentially no impact on sexual function. None. There was a massive review in 2010 that investigated several studies and couldn’t find evidence of any sexual dysfunction caused by circumcision. Circumcision didn’t affect rates of premature ejaculation, erectile dysfunction, difficulty with orgasm, sexual desire, or pain during sex. There’s no evidence that circumcised men suffer sexually because of it.

5. “Babies almost never need to be circumcised for medical reasons.”

This intactivist lie is often followed with the claim that a baby is more likely to die from circumcision than to medically need a circumcision. And, again, that’s just not true. Medically necessary circumcisions aren’t uncommon at all. One of my relatives needed one shortly after birth during surgery to correct a birth defect known as hypospadias. A friend of mine who is now an adult was circumcised as a child to make it easier, safer, and cleaner to use his catheter (he is incontinent).  One of my friends’ sons needed a circumcision at three because of severe recurrent yeast infections. To call these people “mutilated” or “ruined,” or to erase the reality of their experiences, is hurtful—not to mention inaccurate.

 At the end of the day, I don’t regret my decision not to circumcise my son—and I hope that he doesn’t regret it, either. But, unlike other intactivists, I don’t feel a need to bury my head into pseudoscience and lies in order to justify the decision I made regarding my child’s body, and I don’t feel a need to shame or attack men who have been circumcised or parents who choose to do it. As long as the science says that there’s not enough evidence to fully support or condemn circumcision, I think it’s about time we reach an agreement: let’s stop arguing and obsessing over baby penises. You take care of your kids and I’ll take care of mine.