Last Updated on February 19, 2020
New research has emerged about the level of pain a pre-born baby feels while being forcibly aborted, however, the leading mouthpiece for Ireland’s Pro-Choice/ Planned Parenthood lobby does not feel that pain is relevant to the decisions to support and fund abortion.
At odds with the pro-choice activist Dr. Stuart Derbyshire, is pro-life activist John Waters, an author who decided to enter Irish politics because of the importance he sees in new evidence on pain for pre-born babies.
“I have long believed that fetal pain will be the rock abortion finally perishes on. In my 2018 book Give Us Back the Bad Roads, I proposed that ‘abortion will go the way of slavery . . . when medical science identifies the child’s earliest susceptibility to pain, and posterity will look back in horror at this moment we now stain in the blood of innocents, and every shred of our reputation for human feeling will be in the dumpster of history,'” Waters wrote in his latest piece for First Things.
“The new research indicates that unborn babies can feel something like pain as early as 13 weeks,” Derbyshire wrote.
Curiously, Derbyshire felt so strongly about that new research that he continued by saying that exact new evidence, “flirts with a moral recklessness that we are motivated to avoid,” yet, Derbyshire will not change his Pro-Choice stance or influence on abortion laws in Ireland.
For sure the article in the Daily Mail lacked nuance. To be expected, I guess. The RCOG review leaned heavily on the need for a cortex, which is harder to now maintain. Whether or not the fetus feels pain has little to no relevance for abortion.
— Stuart WG Derbyshire (@PainfulGains) January 20, 2020
That was the last straw for Waters, “I decided to run because of the many decades of misrule by an incompetent and corrupt political establishment, culturally, intellectually, psychologically, and spiritually at its lowest ebb in my lifetime,” Waters said.
“Professor Stuart Derbyshire had written in the British Medical Journal in 2006 that it was good medical practice not to talk to women seeking abortions about fetal pain, as there was “good evidence that foetuses cannot experience pain,” Waters wrote.
“Now he is saying something entirely different: that to carry on with abortions in light of the emerging evidence would be to flirt with a moral recklessness that we are motivated to avoid,” Waters wrote.
Speaking about his motivation to impact Irish politics, Waters continued, “I have long believed that fetal pain will be the rock abortion finally perishes on. In my 2018 book Give Us Back the Bad Roads, I proposed that abortion will go the way of slavery . . . when medical science identifies the child’s earliest susceptibility to pain and posterity will look back in horror at this moment we now stain in the blood of innocents, and every shred of our reputation for human feeling will be in the dumpster of history.”
Derbyshire, who influences pro-abortion legislation is part of a group called Catholics For Choice.
The group identifies themselves as “a pro-choice organisation advocating for sexual and reproductive rights from a standpoint of culture, faith, justice and morality.”
Absolutely avoiding the responsibilities of adulthood, and refusing to wander into the concepts of natural law, seemingly unaware of the idea of empathy for fellow humans, Derbyshire shows his lack of connection to the human struggle for life and liberty in his tweets.
We can never prove an experience, even when someone says they hurt. We must speculate. I have spent a lot of time trying to speculate better about pain in a fetus or neonate. It seems to me that pain is inherently subjective and so pain will emerge with subjectivity. 2/8
— Stuart WG Derbyshire (@PainfulGains) December 24, 2019
“Accepting the legitimacy of pain relief would be to treat the fetus as a separate human being rather than something along the lines of a carcinoma being removed from the woman’s body,” Waters said.
“I’m running in Dún Laoghaire, the Dublin constituency in which I have lived for thirty years and the most “liberal” (I say “pseudo-liberal”) constituency in the country. Still, it has a healthy quotient of “pro-life” (I say “pro-baby”) voters, as well as a significant scattering of working-class estates,” Waters said.
