Baby Wipes Part #1 - Introduction

(Spoiler: My conclusion will be that Ashekenazim should not use baby wipes, and that Sephardim may use them if they are squeezed out before Shabbos and are made entirely from synthetic materials. Nonetheless, I do not reject those that are more lenient, and it makes a useful read...)

The Shulchan Aruch (O"H 302:12) rules that one may not dry a wet cup with a towel, as he may come to squeeze the towel.
In O"H 613:9, the Rema states that one may not wipe himself on Yom Kippur with a wet towel (even if it had been wet before the onset of Yom Kippur), as he may come to squeeze the cloth.
In O"H 301:46, he adds that a wet cloth is muktzeh, and may not be moved at all.

The obvious reading is that one may not use or even move a wet cloth on Shabbos, and even a dry cloth may not be used around liquid for fear of getting it wet enough to be squeezed. Use of a soaking towelette to wipe a child be out of the question.

This, in fact, is the view of virtually all the poskim worldwide, including R' Rueven Fienstein, R' Vozner, R' Elyashiv, The Pupa Rav, and R' Yechezkal Roth, who all forbid use of baby wipes on Shabbos.

Nonetheless, I have heard of a few dissenting opinions, most notably R' David Feinstein. (The only others are R' Tvi Berkowitz (Baltimore) and R' Ephraim Greenblatt (Memphis). R' Rueven Feinstein forbids their use.) There are also some poskim that permit certain brands, or with certain caveats. The following discussion is an attempt to understand these opinions, and to explain the original statements of the Shulchan Aruch under the different circumstances that they apply.

(Continued...)