The governor of the Austrian province of Vorarlberg has told hospitals there to suspend religiously motivated 
circumcisions.
Last week, two hospitals in Switzerland, the Zurich University Children’s Hospital and the northern St Gall teaching hospital, also announced that they were delaying religious circumcision until further notice.
Governor Marcus Wallner cited a recent ruling by a German regional court which held that the practice was the equivalent of causing criminal bodily harm, saying that he saw it as a “precedence-setting judgment,” according to the Jewish Chronicle.
On Tuesday he told hospitals not to perform the procedure except for health reasons until the legal situation is clarified in Austria.
Muslims will be most affected by the decision, since they make up 8.4 per cent of the province’s population.
“We are in the process of evaluating the legal and ethical stance in Switzerland,” said Marco Stuecheli, a spokesman for the Zurich hospital.
“There can be complicated cases where the mother of a child wants a circumcision but the father is opposed to it,” he added.
The hospital said it performs only one or two such operations a month.
Meanwhile, Germany’s parliament passed a resolution Thursday endorsing the right of Muslim and Jewish parents to have sons circumcised.
The resolution, passed by a large majority on a show of hands, has no binding legal effect.
It was aimed at calming an international outcry against a verdict last month in a Cologne court which ruled that circumcision except for medical reasons is a bodily-harm offence.
The German Government is expected to draft legislation later this year to protect doctors performing male circumcisions from prosecution.
Although Chancellor Angela Merkel has warned that prohibiting the religious practice would make Germany a laughing stock, surveys show large numbers of Germans are hostile to circumcision and want it outlawed.
Christine Lambrecht, a Social Democratic legislator, said many Germans had written to her charging that a legal exemption for Jews and Muslims would also permit a practice in some African and Middle Eastern nations known as female circumcision.
“Genital mutilation has nothing to do with the circumcision of boys,” she said. “That is a crime and it will stay that way.”
The Left Party opposed infant circumcision on the grounds that a baby cannot consent. One of its legislators, Jens Petermann, told the parliament: “A decision by the parents cannot prevail over the consent of the child himself.”
A survey found 45 percent of Germans want circumcision to be outlawed, 42 percent want it kept legal and 13 percent had no opinion.
Some 55 percent said they did not believe a legal ban on circumcision would lead hostility to Germany abroad. The circumcision of boys for non-religious reasons is rare in Germany
The parliamentary resolution was jointly drafted by legislators from Merkel’s coalition and opposition Social Democrats and Greens.
“The Bundestag urges the government to propose a bill in autumn 2012 which, taking account of the constitutional values of child welfare, physical freedom from injury, religious freedom and parents’ upbringing rights, ensures that the medically competent circumcision of boys without unnecessary pain remains basically permissible,” it said.