Last year, Kaylee Alvarado, a young mother in Bismarck, North Dakota, brought her three-year-old boy to the emergency room with bad stomach pain. Hours later, she left in tears, clutching the hand of her traumatized toddler. The nurses had needed a urine sample, so they had forcibly retracted the boy’s foreskin to insert a catheter.
Kaylee says it happened so quickly she couldn’t stop them.

The Canadian Medical Association, the Canadian Urological Association and the American Academy of Pediatrics all agree that a boy’s foreskin should never be forcibly retracted. Yet many doctors and nurses are not aware of how the foreskin naturally and gradually detaches from the head of the penis (known as the glans).

The consequences can be dire if a boy’s foreskin is prematurely retracted. The boy feels excruciating pain, akin to what’s felt if a nail were ripped from the nailbed.

Forcible retraction can tear the ultra-sensitive foreskin tissue, making the penis prone to scarring and infection.
In some cases, the scarring can lead to “iatrogenic pathologic phimosis,” or an abnormally tight foreskin caused by the retraction. If that’s the case, the boy—or the man he will become—will require further medical intervention.

There are no data on how common forcible foreskin retraction (FFR) is in Canada. But the data from the United States are alarming. A study by Intact America found that 43.4% of intact boys have had their foreskins forcibly retracted by the time they are seven years old. Of those retractions, 50% were done by doctors. Nine percent were done by nurses and 25 percent were done by parents at the encouragement of doctors.
Another study, published in the Journal of Specialists in Pediatric Nursing, reported that 53% of pediatric nurses thought foreskin retraction is necessary for genital hygiene and 42% thought it is necessary to place a catheter.

The owner of the foreskin—the boy—should be the first and only person to retract his foreskin.”