First, let's get one thing straight. There's no such thing as female circumcision. Excising the clitoris and labia of human females is genital mutilation, whose only purpose is to prevent enjoyment of sex. It is not an Islamic practice; it is a barbaric, gynophobic practice.
Male circumcision, on the other hand, is a requirement of two major religions, Judaism and Islam, and in the U.S. it is routinely performed on infants whose parents are neither Jewish nor Moslem. While many describe it as genital mutilation, and point to some risks, research shows that it also has some benefits. How much risk and how much benefit depends on many factors.
First, there's an esthetic factor. I must admit (blush) to having known a number of women intimately. You may guess, if you care at all, whether it's embarrassment or modesty that precludes my telling you how many digits are in that number. I was circumcised at birth, not for any religious reason at the time, but because that was the norm. You might expect Jewish or Moslem women to be "grossed out" by uncircumcised penises, but a number of Gentile women have told me of having the same reaction. While I have nothing against gay men, I personally don't expect to have any close encounters with a penis except my own, but even a small chance of "grossing out" a female seems like enough reason to lose the foreskin.
Obviously there are arguments in favor of circumcision besides the "pretty penis" factor. The circumcised male runs a lower risk of urinary tract infection, HIV, penile cancer, and genital caterpillars. (Just kidding about the caterpillars. Wanted to see if you're paying attention.) Long-term sex partners of circumcised men are less prone to cervical cancer. Admittedly, when medical and hygiene standards are high, those risks are small to begin with, but in America, it is among those whose living standards and access to medical care are lowest that males are least likely to be circumscised.
As for risks of circumcision, almost everyone agrees they are minimal, limited mostly to short-term, easily-treatable infections.
There is controversy over whether circumcision increases or decreases male enjoyment of sex. The very few American scientific studies employing objective measures (such as EEG readings during orgasm) actually lend some slight support to the claim that circumcised men feel "it" more.
In Africa, however, where there is a larger sample of men circumcised as adults, studies of the results are far less ambiguous: Much later, after the subjects had ample time to grow accustomed to the novelty of their circumcised members, they reported notably more intense feelings of arousal during sex and more complete orgasms. In my opinion that would not, in itself, justify circumcision of an adult male whose sex life is satisfactory. After all, when sex isn't the best, it's still pretty damned good! But in some parts of Africa, circumcision for the avoidance of AIDS is a matter of life and death, including for heterosexual men and their partners.
Nothing I've told you here is a closely guarded government secret or something known only to a few top scientists. Most educated Americans have heard or read most of this before.
So why this sudden uproar to malign, even ban, circumcision?
I'm not talking about those people who favor a return to nature and oppose circumcision because they consider it unnatural. Such folks don't try to impose their lifestyle on others by force. If we wanted to save lives by banning something "unnatural," we'd be better advised to make it a criminal act to shave someone's underarms or pubic regions. While that practice may make females more desirable to American males, it's also an efficient way to impose potentially fatal lymph node staph infections.
The following may seem like a strange comparison, but bear with me. All the people who've claimed that President Obama is a Moslem, not an American citizen, a Communist, and who knows what else, know in their hearts it's bullshit. They have a right to disagree with his politics. That's a red-white-and-blue American right. They know damned good and well that Obama is a red-white-and-blue American and (not that religion is supposed to matter) a Christian. He just happens to be black, and they can't stand that, which is not so red-white-and-blue American.
The people who want to outlaw circumcision would really like to outlaw Jews. A wide spectrum of Jewish scholars have published similar conclusions. Maybe those who want to forbid circumcision would like to forbid Islam also, but most of them are probably too ignorant to know that Moslems also circumcise males. It's not anti-circumcision, it's antisemitism. And it's also not red-white-and-blue American, and no, it's not natural either.