A proper tri-fold, double-sided.
Two US Letter pages, landscape, printed on both sides of one sheet and folded into three. The panel labels below (Front Cover, Back Cover, and so on) are just orientation guides for you — they won't print.
How to print and fold it
1. Print both pages landscape, on one sheet, double-sided. If your printer offers two-sided printing, choose it and select “flip on long edge.” Not sure, or printing single-sided? Print page 1, then take that sheet and flip it top-to-bottom (like turning a calendar page, not like turning a book page) and feed it back in to print page 2 on the reverse.
2. Print one test copy first. Hold it up to the light before you print a whole stack: the front cover panel (rightmost, page 1) should sit directly behind the rightmost interior panel (page 2). If it's mirrored, your printer flipped the wrong way — try the other duplex setting.
3. Fold the left panel in first, then fold the right panel (the cover) over the top. The front cover faces out.
Page 1 · outside
By the numbers
- ~0.4%Denmark's circumcision rate — a country where it isn't tied to religion or custom.
- 3×the rate of penile problems found in circumcised boys vs. intact ones, in a 2024 database of 1.7 million boys (1.7% vs. 0.5%).
- 111infant circumcisions it takes to prevent a single UTI in a normal-risk boy.
- 7–18%meatal stenosis rate in studies that actually screen every circumcised boy for it. Basically no risk if intact.
- 49%of US newborn boys were circumcised in 2022, down from 54% in 2012.
Go deeper
- The ethics, in three sentences
- The advice that got this wrong before
- The claims, and the case against them
thecasetowait.org
About The Case to Wait
We're not a medical practice and we're not selling anything. We make one plain-language case: a decision this permanent belongs to the person living in the body, not the people signing the form.
Every claim on our site is sourced — the studies, the numbers, the medical positions, all of it checkable. This brochure strips out the footnotes to make the case fast; the full, cited version is one search away.
Who this is for
- Parents deciding before a birth
- Circumcised men reconsidering their own experience
- Nurses, doulas and pediatricians who get asked
- Anyone tired of getting talked over on this
thecasetowait.org
The Case to Wait
What if we just… waited?
The case for leaving a healthy body alone — statistically, it's what he'd choose for himself, given the chance.
His body. His decision. His future.
Page 2 · inside
Benefits & autonomy
The foreskin isn't spare skin. It's a moving, nerve-dense structure that protects the glans and keeps it from keratinizing. It also rolls rather than stretches — a gliding action that lets skin move against skin during arousal, masturbation, and intercourse alike, instead of relying on friction against a static surface, a mechanical detail most circumcision discussions leave out entirely. The most-cited sensitivity study found the foreskin needed roughly a tenth the pressure of the glans to detect touch — the most sensitive site tested, not the least.
Waiting costs nothing. Cutting can't be undone. A man who wants to be circumcised can choose it as an adult, with anesthesia, consent, and a surgeon of his choosing. A boy circumcised as an infant who grows up to wish he weren't has no equivalent option. One error is reversible. The other isn't.
The medical case
It isn't medically necessary. No major medical association in the world recommends routine circumcision for every newborn boy. The AAP's own 2012 statement stopped short of recommending it; the Royal Dutch Medical Association calls for active deterrence; the Canadian Paediatric Society doesn't recommend it routinely either. It's optional surgery, not standard care.
Circumcision has real complications too. Studies that actually screen every boy, not just the ones who complain, find meatal stenosis (narrowing of the urethral opening) in 7–18% of circumcised boys. Intact boys essentially don't get it.
The strongest medical argument doesn't hold up at home. African HIV trials studying adult men in high-prevalence settings don't seem to transfer. Studies in Denmark (810,719 men) and Ontario found no protective effect at all in a developed country.
The bigger picture
Most of the world doesn't do this. Global prevalence is roughly 30–39%, concentrated in a handful of countries. It's rare across nearly all of Europe, Latin America and East Asia — and even in the US, the rate has fallen from 54.1% (2012) to 49.3% (2022), down to 19.7% in the West.
“He won't remember” isn't the point. A 1997 JAMA trial's unanesthetized comparison group was stopped early because the distress was judged too severe to keep exposing infants to it. A 1995 Lancet study found circumcised boys showed stronger pain responses months later, at routine vaccination. Whether he'll remember was never the reason he should get a say.
Intact care is simple: don't retract, don't force, wash the outside like any other body part. It separates on its own, on its own schedule — usually years later. That's the entire routine.
The decision can wait. He can't get this back. The only real choice here is whether to leave a healthy body alone, or make an irreversible one for someone who isn't old enough to weigh in.