Ethicist and Philosopher. Medical doctor. Oxford. Against killing patients.
Nov 29, 2024 • 10 tweets • 3 min read
We are told that Canada is the wrong place to look (because it is a euthanasia hellhole)
Instead, they say, this bill is based on Oregon
So what is the truth about Oregon's assisted suicide regime? 🧵
Rand Stroup, 53, outlived his initial prognosis of death within 2-4 months, and his doctor recommended stronger chemotherapy.
But his insurer said they weren't willing to pay for this chemotherapy - instead, offering to pay for assisted suicide.
In a stretched NHS, with a stagnating economy and a growing population, it is inevitable we will see the same in the UK
Nov 28, 2024 • 4 tweets • 1 min read
I once witnessed a Do Not Resuscitate conversation as follows:
- Consultant informed by junior team that one patient "needs a DNAR" - note that the reasons are rarely discussed in any detail at all
- Doctor approaches bed on ward round, in bay in view of other patients
Doctor: Good morning
Patient: Hello
Doctor: So, sometimes in hospital, things can go wrong and so if that happens and your heart stops, I think we'll just let you go quietly, OK?
Patient: *mortified face*... OK?
End conversation
Nov 28, 2024 • 5 tweets • 2 min read
"We can't give you a stairlift, but we can kill you"
The story of Christine Gauthier and euthanasia in Canada 🇨🇦
Last year I had the great honour of meeting Christine Gauthier, a military veteran whose injuries during her military career left her wheelchair-bound. She subsequently became a paralympic hero, winning multiple world championships medals.
Nov 28, 2024 • 6 tweets • 2 min read
Assisted suicide advocates: "It works well in other countries!"
Reality: In the Netherlands, around 40% of euthanasia deaths are performed without the patient's consent.
Below is the crazy way one prominent euthanasia advocate justifies this
Robert Young wrote the Stanford Encyclopedia of Philosophy on euthanasia. He freely admits that around 40% of cases are without the patient's consent:
"of those terminally ill persons who have been assisted to die about sixty per cent have clearly been cases of voluntary euthanasia as it has been characterised in this entry; of the remainder, the vast majority of cases were of patients who at the time of their medically assisted deaths were no longer competent."
🚩🚩🚩 Shadowy dark money behind the assisted suicide/euthanasia bill connected to American global population reduction organisations
This is one of the most sinister things I've ever discovered 🧵
Kim Leadbeater, who sponsored this bill, is the Chair of More in Common UK - incidentally not recorded on the Register of MPs interests ()
Misconceptions about US abortion politics I am seeing almost daily since the election 🧵
1) "Abortion has been sent back to the states"
This is not true, though I agree that some pro-life groups mistakenly contributed to this messaging around the time of Dobbs.
The Supreme Court said that the decision is being handed back to "the people and their elected representatives". People elect representatives at both state and federal levels. SCOTUS said nothing about limiting legislation and policy to states.
Indeed this would have been foolish: many relevant parts of abortion are regulated at the federal level (e.g. the licencing of abortion pills at the FDA, federal spending on Planned Parenthood, federal spending on abortion organisations in other countries through USAID), and the US already has federal legislation pertaining to abortion which has not been struck down: e.g. the Partial Birth Abortion Ban Act, passed under Bush Jr, and the Comstock Act, passed under Ulysses Grant.
Nov 6, 2024 • 8 tweets • 3 min read
Now is a very dangerous moment for the pro-life movement. It requires serious courage. 🧵
Take this from a European, where we have seen (many times) where "lesser of two evils" over many years will take you: a far-left conservative party
I am as relieved as anyone by last night's result. Kamala was far, far worse than Trump, and a great evil has been averted.
But pro-lifers - which should include every Christian among others - need to realise how seriously bad the current situation is. A Republican candidate has won the Presidency after a) calling heartbeat ban's "terrible", b) promising to veto a federal ban, c) supporting the abortion pill and IVF, and d) his wife coming out (unopposed) a month before election day supporting abortion with "no compromise"
Oct 13, 2024 • 12 tweets • 5 min read
🚨🇦🇺 Legislators in South Australia are fighting to keep abortion legal from 28 weeks up to birth
This is one of the most shocking displays of abortion extremism and eugenics I have ever seen.
28 weeks is nearly 2 months after viability.
Here's what you need to know: 🧵
South Australia currently allows abortion from 22 weeks up to birth if the doctor decides it is appropriate.
This is one of the most radical abortion laws in the world already, more permissive than any in Europe, and surpassed only by a handful of countries including China and, until recently, North Korea.
Oct 5, 2024 • 9 tweets • 3 min read
OK so here’s my position on the election to make it clear:
What I am saying is:
1) The Democrats are unimaginably evil, corrupt, and a grave a threat to liberal democracy in America and globally. This much is obvious. 🧵
2) For this reason Trump is clearly the lesser of two evils and if you want the lesser of two evils, you should vote for him. I have said this many times
3) Abortion should still be the number one voting issue. Single-issue voting is clearly defensible as I argue in this paper: calumsblog.com/wp-content/upl…
Aug 27, 2024 • 19 tweets • 6 min read
A guide to pro-life voting
After some vicious disagreements in the last few days that are shedding more heat than light, I put together a short thread on what is at stake in November 2024 🧵
Credentials: researcher at a leading university on abortion policy, published an academic paper specifically on the ethics of single-issue pro-life voting (), am a single-issue voter on abortion myselfcalumsblog.com/wp-content/upl…
May 18, 2024 • 8 tweets • 2 min read
🚨🇧🇷 Brazilian judge authorises 'torture' method of killing unborn babies against medical advice!
Doctors in Brazil can now inject unborn babies' hearts with an excruciatingly painful drug to kill them in an abortion, after 22 weeks! 🧵 1/8
Feticide is typically done in abortions after 20-22 weeks to make sure that the baby is dead after being delivered. Since they can begin to survive outside the womb around this time, and since the aim of an abortion is typically to kill the baby (not merely to remove the pregnancy), feticide is done first. 2/8
May 14, 2024 • 6 tweets • 2 min read
That abortion kills a child shouldn't really be controversial. Abortion obviously kills a child. 🧵 1/6
It is obviously killing (does anyone seriously deny this?) - this is why late-term abortion involves a procedure whose technical name is feticide. It is very obviously the ending of a biological life - i.e. killing. That doesn't necessarily make it wrong - killing bacteria can be morally permissible, for example. 2/6
May 2, 2024 • 8 tweets • 3 min read
One of the most common questions I get is:
Is abortion ever medically necessary?
I get why this is confusing with totally opposing answers coming from different quarters. So hopefully this will make things a bit clearer. 🧵 1/8
It might seem like there is an empirical disagreement about whether a certain procedure is ever necessary. That is not really the case.
The empirical facts are clear and uncontroversial:
Sometimes, it is medically necessary (i.e. to prevent the mother from dying) to remove a baby from the womb before viability (now around 21-22 weeks), in which case it will obviously pass away. 2/8
Apr 19, 2024 • 13 tweets • 5 min read
Some of you may have seen this headline in the UK's premier fake news rag The Guardian:
"Italy passes measures to allow anti-abortion activists to enter abortion clinics"
So what's the real story behind this? 🧵 1/13
theguardian.com/world/2024/apr…
The headline makes it sound like Italy has legalised the invasion of abortion clinics, with protestors waving signs in the waiting rooms or marching into the operating room shouting.
Obviously, this being The Guardian, it has only the vaguest resemblance to the truth. 2/13
Mar 26, 2024 • 5 tweets • 1 min read
Breaking: New Irish Medical Journal paper discusses a woman nearly killed by abortion pills
She had an ectopic pregnancy and wasn't given an ultrasound first, because abortion-obsessed doctors, activists and politicians said... 1/
(for political reasons, thinly veiled by economic and pseudoscientific medical reasons) that it wasn't necessary.
This woman's blood pressure was down to 60/30, her haemoglobin was down to 7, and she had 2 and a half litres of blood haemorrhaged into her abdomen. 2/
Mar 9, 2024 • 14 tweets • 3 min read
Very painful reality check for Ireland's leaders, and an enormous win for common sense, for mothers, and for the family! 🇨🇮
The government has been absolutely crushed in TWO referenda, despite virtually all the money and political institutions being on their side. 🧵 1/12
This comes after years of painful defeats for common sense, life and the family in Ireland, with an ultra-woke, far-left, authoritarian (see hate speech bill) government running rampant over the country for a decade. 2/12
Jun 25, 2023 • 4 tweets • 2 min read
Reuters are incapable of telling the truth on abortion globally. Here they say that Prudente’s doctors admitted her life was in danger but refused to perform an abortion. But her doctors explicitly said otherwise - which is why they didn’t perform one.
reuters.com/world/europe/m…
They also say that “At present, a doctor is liable to up to four years in jail if he terminates a pregnancy to save the mother's life.” But everyone knows that abortion is permissible in Malta to save the life of the mother. These abortions happen all the time legally in hospital
May 13, 2023 • 22 tweets • 4 min read
Ever hear people say abortion pill reversal is unsafe, because they abandoned the only randomised controlled trial done on it over safety concerns?
Thread below to illustrate just how dishonest this is. TL;DR: they abandoned it because CURRENT TREATMENT was (maybe) harming women
Here's the study:
10 patients. 5 had current treatment (expectant management, not taking misoprostol); 5 had abortion pill reversal (taking progesterone instead of misoprostol). They cancelled it after 10 patients because 3 patients had haemorrhages.pubmed.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/31809439/
Jul 14, 2022 • 19 tweets • 4 min read
This viral video about fetuses being parasites is honestly the perfect example of what happens when you give a first year undergrad a small bit of technical knowledge and a camera tiktok.com/t/ZTR6UvAF9/?k…
(I'm not saying she is a first year undergrad - just that she comes across like one)