My oldest had to have one for medical reasons. He had the option of attempting to deal with it without surgery but decided he didn't want to deal with that.
Doing that to a baby for no good reason is despicable and I hate forever the 19th century prudes that decided it would be a good way to keep teenage boys from choking the chicken.
Unnecessarily doing it especially to a newborn should absolutely be illegal. Sometimes it might be medically necessary, like my son opted to have it done years ago because he was entirely non-retractile and it was causing him a great deal of pain. But outside of instances like that? Shouldn't be done.