If your parents had instead started a dramatic stretched piercing, would you see it differently? What if they made a pretty scarification pattern on your back?

It is abuse, because it’s a permanent body modification with no medical purpose for which the child has not given consent. I think that for cultural reasons there does need to be protection so that estranged children who were snipped “for medical reasons” back in the day can’t go back and sue their parents, but the word “abuse” is accurate.

Religious or not.