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Mary Conant, R.N.

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Look at These Hands
by Mary Conant, R.N.

Statement to the press May 25, 1994, Third International Symposium on Circumcision, University of Maryland

Look at these hands.

These hands have taken a newborn baby from his mother's safe warm breast and
his father's sheltering arms, and these hands have tied this baby to a cold
hard platter and served him up to the circumciser.

These hands have readied the scalpel, even as they caressed the brow of the
terrified baby as he struggles for freedom and searches my eyes for
compassion he will not find.

A tortured being has sucked frantically on this finger in a hopeless effort
to end the agony as his flesh - his birthright - is ripped from him and
thrown in the garbage. 

These hands have removed the diaper painfully adhered to the feces-covered
wound between his chubby legs. 

These hands have shielded my ears from his screams.

Nurses of America, I did not become a nurse to hurt babies, and neither did
you.

In 1992, with over 20 other nurses at St. Vincent Hospital in Santa Fe, New
Mexico, I gave notice to my employers and declared I would no longer be an
accomplice in the atrocity that is infant circumcision.

I have reclaimed my tattered soul and begun the process of becoming whole
again.

I am a conscientious objector in the war against our infant brothers and
sons and it feels wonderful. 

Nurses of America, wipe the blood from your hands and join me!


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Mary Conant is a co-founder of Nurses for the Rights of the Child. She is
one of the original 24 Conscientious Objectors to Circumcision nurses 
at St. Vincent Hospital, Santa Fe, New Mexico. She also appears on Barry
Ellsworth's video documentary The Nurses of St. Vincent: Saying No to
Circumcision
.

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