If you're pregnant with a little boy, there will be an important decision to make once he's born: To circumcise or not to circumcise? It's tough deciding what you want to do with your little one's most intimate area, especially when you don't have the same equipment. In some countries, like the United States, circumcision is near universal; in Europe and many other areas of the world, it's much more common to be uncircumcised. Some argue that circumcision is a pointless surgery, but should it be outlawed? One California group thinks so.

"I am just a mom trying to save the little babies," Jena Troutman, a mother of two young boys and a leader of a proposed ban on the practice, told The New York Times. "I'd rather be on the beach, but nobody is talking about this, so I have to."

Troutman and her group claim that circumcision is tantamount to genital mutilation - and they've introduced ballot measures in San Francisco and Santa Monica to ban it. They believe the practice is an unnecessary surgical procedure to which an infant can't consent - and it also carries a risk of serious infection, mutilation and even death.

Others, however, believe that the decision is a deeply personal one that parents have the right to make. They contend that allowing the state to govern what parents can do with their own children sets a dangerous precedent, and that a ban on circumcision is discriminatory against Jews and Muslims, whose religion mandates the practice.