TUPELO, Miss. (Bennington Vale Evening Transcript) -- In a landmark decision Tuesday, a regional German court ruled that the Jewish ritual of circumcision, or brit milah, amounts to grievous bodily harm. In rendering its decision, the court found the "fundamental right of the child to bodily integrity outweighed the fundamental rights of the parents." Legal experts in the country expect the judgment to set a controversial precedent, with members of the Jewish community claiming that Germans once again have trampled their rights. The procedure is typically administered by mohels who are not licensed physicians with proper medical training. Because the practice leads to a permanent change in anatomy and is not performed in the same sterile environment as a hospital, the court in Cologne deemed it illegal. As news reached North America, where some U.S. states could be inclined to follow suit, representatives from Mississippi lashed out, saying that no government possesses the right to dictate the choices a person makes about his body.

Republican Governor Phil Bryant, an expert in signing laws related to personal health choices, called the German court's ruling an "affront to individual and religious liberties."

"This is an absolutely disgusting abuse of federal power," Bryant told reporters during a small press conference Friday. "The government has no right, and should have no right, to tell a person what he can or can't do with his body. It's his body. It's his life, his decision, and ultimately his issue with God, not Caesar. Or in this case, the Kaiser."

Gov. Bryant warned other U.S. states against considering similar legislation.

"Once the German government outlaws the practice, desperate Jews will simply head over the border to some filthy place like Poland or the Czech Republic to get cheap back-alley circumcisions," he explained. "There's no telling how many little boys will end up mutilated, maimed, or even dead as a result. It's better to let the Jews have their foreskin termination procedures in safe, modern facilities that are staffed with skilled professionals. If such laws are enacted here, then we can expect our citizens to endanger their children by having back-alley circumcisions in Mexico."

Even worse, Bryant offered, those affected could resort to performing the surgeries themselves using common household tools such as kitchen knives, rusty wires, metal coat hangers, or fruit zesters.

"There are actions the Germans could reasonably take to curb the number of circumcisions," Bryant continued. "They already require parental consent, but they could also force the parents to stare at graphic images of freshly cut penises and their raw, discarded foreskins. That could be an effective deterrent. But in the end, it's situational. Sometimes a circumcision is necessary to prevent a health risk to the child. [The German lawmakers] didn't take that into account."

Bryant cited an example of this scenario from his own community. A boy on his block was born with a foreskin that had grown over the tip of the penis, which eventually blocked the release of urine and led to a dangerous infection. Without an emergency circumcision, the child faced mortal peril.

"In a case like this, it's a matter of life and death, not a frivolous decision," Bryant said. "But the German law takes none of these nuances into account. It's all or nothing, and it's inhumane if you ask me. What's next? They pack all the Jews onto trains and ship them off to labor camps away from the pure race of uncircumcised supermen? For simply making tough choices they feel are in their best interests? These decisions are never made lightly, and they're never easy or painless, but what place does the government have to inject its moral code into the private lives of its citizens? Such a place has no business calling itself a democracy when it treats its constitutional protections as toilet paper."

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