DELRAY BEACH, Fla. » A woman who fled with her son while fighting to prevent his circumcision will face imprisonment if she doesn’t return and allow the surgery to proceed, a judge ruled Friday.

In a stinging rebuke of the mother, Heather Hironimus, Circuit Judge Jeffrey Gillen said she had successfully dragged out a legal battle and was "reprehensible" for going missing with the boy and for conduct that has put the 4-year-old in a public spotlight "making him an object of curiosity and worse." He found her in contempt and demanded she appear in court Tuesday with the child or he would command police to find her.

She will only avoid jail on the contempt charge, Gillen said, if she signs paperwork necessary to schedule the procedure that she initially agreed to in a legal document.

"This child has been placed in a light that provides much too much scrutiny for a little boy," the judge said. "I blame no one but the mother for that."

It was the latest dramatic turn in a case nearly as old as the boy himself, and one that has become a rallying cry for "intactivists," the circumcision opponents who say removing the foreskin is barbaric. Though Hironimus gave her blessing to circumcision in the parenting plan she reached with the boy’s father, Dennis Nebus of Boca Raton, she later changed her mind, leading to a long court battle. Circuit and appellate judges have sided with the father.

The father has called circumcision "just the normal thing to do." The mother said it’s not worth the risks.

After Hironimus, of Boynton Beach, refused to sign papers to allow the circumcision and after protesters spotlighted the case, potential surgeons have backed out of circumcising the boy. Both Nebus and the boy’s doctors have received death threats. Meantime, the mother has stoked the protests and publicity, despite a court order not to, said May Cain, an attorney for the father, who appeared in court.

"She’s willing to flee with him and plaster him all over the Internet and do anything she can," Nebus said. "She’s stated that she’s going to do everything that she can to stop it."

Nebus said he has not seen his son since Feb. 19. Thomas Hunker, the attorney for Hironimus, said he did not know where his client was. After the hearing, Hunker said "We’re concerned for the child’s wellbeing and emotional condition."

Though circumcision rates have fallen in the U.S., a majority of boys still undergo the procedure, though a bubbling movement against it has developed. The CDC says medical evidence shows benefits clearly outweigh risks, and that circumcision can lower a male’s risk of sexually transmitted diseases, penile cancer and urinary tract infections.