Nationality American Education Harvard Law School Role Lawyer | Name J. Svoboda Occupation Human Rights Attorney | |
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The right to bodily integrity j steven svoboda
J. Steven Svoboda is a patent lawyer who has been an attorney since 1991. Svoboda is the founder of California-based organization, Attorneys for the Rights of the Child. As an attorney, Svoboda is involved in educating and litigating on behalf of genital integrity issues. He is a strong opponent of circumcision of children. He also works as a patent lawyer.
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Education
Svoboda graduated cum laude from Harvard Law School in 1991, the same year Barack Obama graduated. Previously, he received a bachelor's degree in Physics and English from the University of California at Los Angeles (UCLA), receiving awards as an Outstanding Student in each of his two majors. He then received a master's degree in Physics from the University of California at Berkeley.
Work
Svoboda founded Attorneys for the Rights of the Child in 1997.
He has published over 200 reviews of books relating to men, boys, and gender. For eight years, he wrote a column for Everyman magazine titled, "Gender, Law, and Society," which he renamed after his first child's birth, "Gender, Law, and Fatherhood." He is co-author, with Warren Farrell and James Sterba, of the gender studies textbook, "Does Feminism Discriminate Against Men?" (Oxford University Press, 2007). He has also been a contributor to the web site Men's News Daily.
Svoboda was invited by the United Nations to participate in a 2001 Human Rights meeting in Geneva where his presentation was the basis of a committee of experts writing a UN document entirely devoted to the subject of male circumcision.
He was interviewed on Penn and Teller's television program Bullshit! on Showtime, where he explained his view of some of the legal aspects concerning male circumcision in the United States.
After the death in June 2011 of his friend, the activist Van Lewis, Svoboda was invited to deliver a memorial speech in Van’s honor at Van’s memorial service in Tallahassee. Many intactivists contributed to Svoboda’s memorial talk.
ARC’s work has been recognized by Harvard Law School, the New York Times, the Wall Street Journal, Men’s Health Magazine, and numerous other well-known organizations and publications.
He is also the founder of the Bus Stop Co-op, a vegetarian organic cooperative in Berkeley, California.
He is a former performance artist and a tournament chess player rated as an expert (the ranking below master) by the United States Chess Federation.
His wife is a pediatrician. They have two children, a boy and a girl.
He is the senior board member of and Public Relations Director for the National Coalition for Men, which claims to be the world's oldest and largest non-profit devoted to publicizing the alleged harm done to men and boys by gender discrimination.
Publications
His publications include "Out of step: fatal flaws in the latest AAP policy report on neonatal circumcision“ [written with Robert S. Van Howe, M.D.], "Journal of Medical Ethics," 2013, an article about the American Academy of Pediatrics' 2012 policy statement on circumcision to which the AAP actually replied in the same issue of the Journal of Medical Ethics; "Circumcision of Male Infants as a Human Rights Violation, "Journal of Medical Ethics," 2013; Tortured Bodies, Tortured Minds, Informed Consent as a Legal Fiction Inapplicable to Male Circumcision,” in The Rights of the Child: Ensuring Every Child's Fundamental Right to Body Ownership and Protection from Medical, Cultural, and Religious Infringements (G.C. Denniston et al., eds., Springer, 2013), "Promoting Genital Autonomy by Exploring Commonalities Between Male, Female, Intersex, and Cosmetic Female Genital Cutting," Global Discourse, Summer 2012, "A Rose By Any Other Name: Rethinking the Similarities and Differences between Male and Female Genital Cutting," in Fearful Symmetries: Essays and Testimonies Around Excision and Circumcision, edited by Chantal Zabus (Rodopi, 2009); Van Howe R, Svoboda JS, "Neonatal pain relief and the Helsinki Declaration," Journal of Law, Medicine & Ethics 2008: 36: 803-823; http://www.cirp.org/library/ethics/hodges3/ "Prophylactic Interventions on Children: Balancing Human Rights with Public Health"] (Journal of Medical Ethics 2002), and "The Limits of the Law: Comparative Analysis of Legal and Extralegal Methods to Control Child Body Mutilation Practices" (2001).