UPDATE::New York City Health Board Repeals Rule on Consent Forms for Circumcision Ritual - The New York Times

The New York City Board of Health voted on Wednesday to ease regulations on a controversial circumcision ritual practiced in the ultra-Orthodox Jewish community, fulfilling a priority of Mayor Bill de Blasio.

The vote repealed a Bloomberg-era rule requiring parents to sign a consent form before the ritual, which involves a person performing a circumcision, known as a mohel, to use his mouth to suck blood away from the incision on an infant’s penis. The practice has been linked to herpes infections in infants.

The city’s health department will instead ask hospitals to distribute a brochure to Orthodox families that warns of the risks involved in the ritual, known as metzitzah b’peh. City Hall officials said they were finishing up an agreement with Orthodox leaders so that the mohel would be tested for herpes if an infant was infected.

But those tests, and any penalties for mohels found to be infected, would not be mandated by law.

In effect, Mr. de Blasio, a Democrat, is betting that collaborating with Orthodox leaders — a group that has long felt alienated from government — will do more to protect infants’ health than in previous attempts to impose regulations on a cherished practice, even one linked to two deaths.

The consent forms had infuriated leaders in the city’s politically influential ultra-Orthodox Jewish community, which called the requirement an infringement on religious freedom. As a candidate, Mr. de Blasio had pledged to remove them, and the mayor has noted that herpes infections stemming from the ritual had continued to be reported even after the forms were introduced.

New York City Health Board Repeals Rule on Consent Forms for Circumcision Ritual - The New York Times