The DISTURBING Reality of Late-Term Abortions
Today on the Doctor Jo Show, I'll be exposing the cover up on late term abortion in Australia that has been so successful that literally no one knows the brutal truth. Hi, everybody. My name is Joanna Howe. I'm a professor of law, Rhodes Scholar from Oxford, and it's literally taken me almost a decade to uncover the data I'm gonna share with you today. What you're gonna see is gonna blow in your mind, and that's today on the Doctor Jo Show.
Joanna Howe:So in Australia, Abortion up to birth is legal, but nobody knows about it because of the extent of the cover up. This was exposed very recently when Monica Smit from Reignite Democracy took to the streets of Queensland and asked people. She had with her a 34 old, pregnant woman and she asked people would it be legal for this woman to access an abortion and therefore kill her baby at thirty four weeks under Queensland law? Let's take a look at some of the responses she got.
Monica Smit:I'm joined today by Heather, who is thirty four weeks pregnant, and we are in Brisbane CBD. And we're going to be asking people if they think it's legal for Heather to have an abortion here in Queensland. So let's see how we go. Do you think it's legal in Queensland for her to have an abortion? No?
Monica Smit:Undoubtful. Oh my goodness. How many how many weeks pregnant? No. Not thirty four weeks.
Monica Smit:No. Thirty four weeks. No. No way. No.
Monica Smit:Maybe not. I'd say no. At thirty four? No. I don't think so.
Monica Smit:No. Probably too far along. She can. Abortion is legal up till birth. Yeah.
Monica Smit:So even thirty eight weeks, forty weeks. You're about to push out the baby. It's a bit late. Not at that stage. No.
Monica Smit:I think.
Joanna Howe:No. Well,
Monica Smit:she can. She can. It's appalling. You know? Well, actually, it it is legal to have an abortion up until birth.
Monica Smit:Just concluded our interviews, and the most shocking thing for me was that not one of them knew that it was legal to have abortions in Queensland and all over Australia right up until birth.
Joanna Howe:So not a single person that Monica spoke to was aware that you could kill a baby at thirty four weeks and even later under Queensland law. They were universally shocked and she spoke to, it looked like, at least 10 to 20 people that day on the streets, of Queensland. So that is quite enlightening, isn't it? Because the fact that there's such a low level of awareness is quite interesting and it gets you thinking, well, why is there such a low level of awareness? What's going on?
Joanna Howe:Who's covering this up? Why is there this interest in not telling us, about what's going on? So I clicked Monica's video and posted it to my Instagram and it got such a strong reaction there too. And I wanted to share with you some of the comments because I've been now posting on social media for two and a half years on the topic of abortion up to birth. That's actually the reason I started speaking out about abortion.
Joanna Howe:I'd had a pretty cushy life, a good academic career, happy, you know, with my children and my friendship circle. Not done anything particularly controversial. But in 2021, South Australia legislated abortion up to birth and that was the catalyst for me because I felt, that's the state I live in. And if I don't speak up about abortion up to birth, the fact that we can kill babies right up until birth for any reason, then I'm just allowing the greatest injustice of our time to to to exist. And, you know, as a mother, as a law professor, as someone who spent her career researching and advocating for justice for working people, this just it just it felt like I just had to do it.
Joanna Howe:So I have been doing it, but, you know, almost every day or every second day, I will get a comment a little bit like this one that I'm gonna read to you now. Last data I read, less than one percent of abortions are late stage abortions and it seems to happen almost entirely because there are severe abnormalities or the mother is at risk of dying. The study I saw about Queensland specifically said that they don't come to light until quite late or they were aware of the abnormality. I think she means they weren't aware of the abnormality, but the extent wasn't certain until the fetus developed further. No one is aborting viable fetuses, so that is literally something that I get all the time.
Joanna Howe:Basically, people say late term abortions are less than one percent of the overall number of abortions, and it's only done to save the mother's life or because the baby is not viable, it's gonna die anyway. So let's just take some of those points and think about them. So she says late term abortions account for less than one percent. So I think when we're talking in percentages, we have to think about, well, what does that mean numerically? The reality is eighty eight thousand Australians Australian babies are killed through abortion every year.
Joanna Howe:That's nearly a hundred thousand, so it's a huge amount and so when we're talking about less than one percent, less than one percent of eighty eight thousand is eight hundred and eighty babies a year, so that's more than two a day who are being brutally killed by a late term abortion at a gestation that they can feel pain. So when somebody says, oh, well, it's just less than one percent, you know, I think the sheer number of abortions are just so significant in Australia. It's the leading cause of death that dwarfs any other cause of death by far and therefore, when we're talking less than one to two percent, we're talking eight hundred and eighty to a thousand babies a year that are viable, that are post twenty weeks that we could induce these babies alive, give them medical care and probably a lot of them would survive. This is not a really small amount. It's a significant amount.
Joanna Howe:The second thing I guess that we note in these comments is just around foetal abnormality and the mother's life being at risk. So, you know, look at this comment from Christopher Pomfret. Nobody wants to have a late term abortion. It's actually illegal unless approved for very serious medical reasons by two doctors. These are babies that are not going to survive.
Joanna Howe:So, yes, the only reason why people are needing late term abortions are for medically necessary reasons. So isn't that a big claim from Christopher Pomfret? It's actually illegal unless approved for very serious medical reasons by two doctors. We might be thinking about why does he think that and how has this cover up become so effective. So let's take a look at this clip, from Channel Nine.
Joanna Howe:They were doing an explainer on abortion in Australia. I think it's quite interesting, just to just to have a watch, to look at their language.
9News:One in three women in Australia will have an abortion in their lifetime, and ninety two percent of those procedures will occur in the the first fourteen weeks of the pregnancy. There are two types of abortions available to Australian women. Medical abortions, which use medication to induce a miscarriage in pregnancy under nine weeks or surgical abortions for more advanced pregnancies. The laws around abortions differ from state to state. In Victoria, Tasmania, and Queensland, it's legal until a certain point in the pregnancy.
9News:After this time, two medical practitioners must agree that their procedure is in the patient's best interest based on their physical, psychological, and social circumstances.
Joanna Howe:So it's no wonder that Christopher Pomfret thinks abortion is a legal late in pregnancy because that is literally the language that is being put forward by the abortion establishment and being, and being perpetuated by the media. So this Channel nine explainer, which presents as very factual, says that abortion is legal up until a certain point and then after that two doctors need to prove it. Now, in reality, we unpack what that means. Abortion isn't illegal after that certain point. It is still legal, isn't it?
Joanna Howe:It's just that there's an additional criteria around it. So a more accurate way of talking about this is to say that abortion is legal up until a certain point. So in South Australia, that's twenty two weeks and six days. In Victoria, it's twenty four weeks. In Tassie, it's sixteen weeks.
Joanna Howe:So it's on demand. No questions asked. I can just get an abortion up until that point. And then after that point, there's additional criteria that need to be met and in most states, it's a two doctor rule and the two doctors need to approve the late term abortion. So it's not that it's illegal after that point, it's actually that it's legal but there's additional criteria and if you think about it, you know, if I was going in for a heart transplant or I needed surgery, there would be legal requirements.
Joanna Howe:It's not like I could just go in and demand that health care. I would have to meet certain criteria. So it doesn't make it illegal because there is certain criteria. In fact, it is legal. I just need to meet the medical criteria for it.
Joanna Howe:So the inaccuracy in our language, I think it's deliberate. It's a deliberate misinformation, deliberate lies because they don't want people to realize, they don't want Australians to know that abortion is legal through all forty weeks of pregnancy, through all nine months and for any reason. So that brings us to the third really big lie in this whole cover up. The first lie was that, you know, this almost ever happens, it's less than one percent. The second lie is it's actually illegal after a certain point, late term abortion's illegal, but the third lie is that if it does happen, it's happening because the baby is gonna die or because the mother's life is at risk.
Joanna Howe:In that channel nine clip I just showed you, the journalist identified a number of criteria such as the physical well-being of the mother, the psychological well-being of the mother and the social well-being of the mother. So in every state and territory in Australia that criteria exists. There's different wording in the legislation, so we're gonna flick up on the screen the New South Wales Abortion Act, which was amended in 2019 to allow abortion up to birth under the Gladys Berejiklian government, the Liberal government at the time. If we look at section six of the Abortion Law Reform Act, it says under section three that if, a termination is to occur after twenty two weeks, so that's the gestational limit for the on demand. So in New South Wales, you can walk up to your doctor and demand an abortion for any reason up until twenty two weeks.
Joanna Howe:After twenty two weeks, section six kicks in and there's a bit of additional criteria and it says, in considering whether a termination should be performed on a person under this section, a specialist medical practitioner must consider, a, all relevant medical circumstances, b, the person's current and future physical, psychological, and social circumstances, and c, the professional standards and guidelines that apply. So six three b, the person's current and future psychological, social, and physical circumstances. So it's difficult to think of a reason that doesn't get encompassed by that. I lost my job. I no longer have anywhere to live.
Joanna Howe:My partner broke up with me. I am really struggling with my kids right now. I've got three kids already at home and I'm really struggling to look after them. Any of these reasons could be enough. My husband is putting pressure on me to have this abortion.
Joanna Howe:He doesn't want us to have any more kids. We've already got three girls. We've just found out the baby's gonna be a girl at the twenty week scan. That's enough to to justify an abortion because that criteria in six three b is so broad that, you know, if finding out I'm gonna have another girl, really impacts my mental well-being because it's impacting my marriage, it's impacting my happiness, it's impacting the way I can care for my other children, then that that is a reason to justify an abortion. So, you know, I think the thing that we need to recognize is, yes, it's dressed up in legal language, and yes, it seems like there's additional criteria that therefore makes it really hard to access, but the law in every state and territory allows abortion right up until birth and the two doctor rule is no protection at all because the first doctor meets the woman and does the assessment.
Joanna Howe:In most states and territories, the second doctor doesn't even need to do a consult. They can just look at the file and sign on the bottom line for approval. It's a tick the box exercise and the other thing people need to know is that if you're rocking up for a late term abortion, so in South Australia where I'm from you go to the pregnancy advisory clinic in Woodville, you go there, say I want a late term abortion, you meet with their counselor and the social worker, maybe the doctor, but once you've done those meetings, there's two doctors on-site. There's two abortionists on-site. That whole place, Pregnancy Advisory Clinic in Woodville, it's an abortions clinic.
Joanna Howe:It's an abortion center. They, they are passionately pro abortion. And so you don't need to, like, shop around for your second doctor. They've got two doctors on-site that can sign that form and consign your baby to having their heart injected brutally with potassium chloride, something we don't even do in America on death row to rapists and murderers. They get pain relief before that injection.
Joanna Howe:Yet, you know, in Australia that injection of potassium chloride or digoxin, a very poisonous substance done completely without pain relief into the baby's heart. At a gestation, they can feel pain and then the baby is delivered dead. They're delivered stillborn. So, you know, it's a brutal brutal procedure and yet it is legal through all forty weeks and that's the late term abortion procedure specifically that's used. And we can see from those definitions that a late term abortion can occur for any reason, but then people will still turn around and say, but it never happens.
Joanna Howe:So let's look at this comment from Andree Page. She writes, at doctor Johanna Howe, all the information I've read on the legal terms for late term abortion in Australia is that it's up to twenty four weeks. Anything thereafter is for medical reasons in relation to the mother's health and the severe health reasons for the baby and that it is in fact an induced birth if it's over thirty weeks or so. There is nowhere that it states that in Australia it's legal to terminate up to thirty four weeks. Please provide me that government legislation if you are advising where it says it's legal up to thirty four weeks if you can.
Joanna Howe:Thank you. So this does seem to be like a really genuine question from someone that genuinely wants to know the answer and is really confused because they've tried to Google it, but the cover up is so big that they just can't find out. So she's been Googling and it's true when you put it into Google it does make it sound like abortion's only available up until twenty three, twenty four weeks. But, Andrea Paige, what you need to know is that in the states which release the data on the reason for abortion, so not every state even releases this data. That's the extent of the cover up.
Joanna Howe:But through, honestly, years and years of work, I've combed through government reports, questions on notice. I've looked at all of the sources that I can find and I'm gonna share with you now what we have. So in South Australia and Victoria, they record the reason for abortion, for late term abortion, and that's what I'm gonna use. If I just pull up the report from 2020, so in 2020, what we can see is that there were a 24 babies who were perfectly healthy. So the maternal condition, this is a termination for a psychosocial indication.
Joanna Howe:So there's nothing wrong with the baby. Baby's perfectly healthy. The mother is perfectly physically healthy. There's nothing wrong with the mother's physical health. So this is not needed to save her life.
Joanna Howe:And psychosocial, that means there's something going on in her mental health or her social well-being that means she feels like she needs to kill her child. And so between twenty and twenty seven weeks, there were a hundred and twenty four perfectly healthy babies killed in Victoria in twenty twenty. And then get this, I mean, yeah, I mean, that blows my mind. That blows my mind. A hundred and twenty four between twenty and twenty seven weeks, but even more shocking, five babies killed between twenty eight and thirty one weeks.
Joanna Howe:And then you can see in the table, they've actually got thirty two to thirty six weeks, thirty seven weeks plus. It's clearly legal throughout all of that time, but, the late term abortions largely concentrate between twenty and thirty one weeks. Now let's just talk really quickly about what that looks like. So a baby at twenty weeks is fully formed. They've got all their body parts.
Joanna Howe:They look like a baby. Anyone that's had an ultrasound scan, I've had five babies, so I can tell you this for a fact, but I know many people listening would also have had this experience. You see a baby. You see a baby hiccuping. You see a baby that's grimacing or smiling, sucking their thumb.
Joanna Howe:They've got all their arms, legs, body parts. If the mother tastes carrots, they smile because it feels it tastes sweet. If the mother tastes kale, the baby grimaces. We've seen this, you know, imaging in utero of what the baby is doing in the womb. They're reacting to light and sound.
Joanna Howe:They know their mother's voice and yet in Victoria, a 28 healthy babies, nothing wrong with them. So think about all these comments, oh, this never happens except for really sick babies or for really disabled babies with a life threatening fetal abnormality. They're not gonna survive. This is the compassionate thing to do. I'm calling BS on that because in just one year in 2020 in Victoria, just one Australian state, a hundred and twenty eight healthy babies were killed through being injected with potassium chloride and then induced dead, delivered, stillborn.
Joanna Howe:And the really shocking thing is it's just totally unnecessary. Right? So these babies, if they're at twenty twenty one weeks, they're on the cusp of viability. But babies have survived around the world from twenty two weeks. And by twenty eight weeks, a baby has a ninety six percent chance of survival.
Joanna Howe:So those five babies that were killed between twenty eight and thirty one weeks, that's just absolutely shocking because they should have been induced alive. They were healthy. The mom was physically healthy. The mom had to give birth anyway. She had to go through labor.
Joanna Howe:Why didn't they induce those five babies alive and then place them in the NICU and give them support and then allow the mother to recover, to revive? If she wants to place her baby up for adoption, she can and she can close that chapter of her life, but she hasn't killed her child in the way that she has in a late term abortion and we protected the human rights of that child. I mean, that that's what we should be doing with these babies. And, you know, Andree Page, you asked, you know, show me that it's legal up to 34. Well, it's actually legal up until birth, which hopefully you're realising through watching this video, but I'm going to flick up on the screen now a screenshot from 2011 where a 37 old healthy baby was killed for a psychosocial reason in Victoria.
Joanna Howe:So perfectly healthy baby, physically healthy mum. They deliberately went in and injected that baby with digoxin inducing a painful cardiac arrest and then induced labour, delivered that baby dead. The mother went through labour, delivered that baby vaginally and dead, and it was totally unnecessary, completely healthy 37. One of mine, my second one was born at 37. So this is just really, really shocking stuff.
Joanna Howe:The other state we have late term abortion data from is South Australia. The law introducing abortion up to birth, was passed in, I think it was like March 2022, but it wasn't enacted until until July 2023. So it was enacted late, which was great because it we saved so many babies because it was enacted late. But once it was enacted, I'm gonna pull up the data for the first six months. You can see in the first six months between July and December 2022, there were eight healthy babies killed.
Joanna Howe:So these are babies killed for a non life threatening reason for the mother. So you can see to save the life of the pregnant person or another fetus, so to save the life of the mother, it's zero. It's zero and that's because late time abortion is never medically necessary to save the mother's life. That's something that everybody needs to know. If a mother's life was at risk late in pregnancy because she's got ruptured membranes or severe preeclampsia, what the doctors would do is not this time consuming surgical intervention of injecting the baby with potassium chloride and then delivering the baby dead.
Joanna Howe:No, the mother's life is at risk. What they do is go in with an emergency c section and they can get that baby out. I've had one OB GYN tell me in less than ten minutes, but probably more likely an hour or two, but they can do that emergency c section and they don't waste time killing the baby. They just remove that baby alive and then give care to the baby and care to the mother. So what you will see in the South Australian reports which give this data, you can see to save the life of a mother late in pregnancy, it's always gonna be zero because you don't need a late term abortion for that.
Joanna Howe:So we can see eight healthy babies killed for physical or mental health reason of the mother and two for fetal anomaly. Now, it doesn't say that those were life threatening foetal anomalies. It doesn't have to be. It can be a cleft lip. It can be Down syndrome.
Joanna Howe:There's nothing there to say that this is a baby that has to be able to not survive. And then if we pull up the next 12 of data, we can see there's a significant increase. It's thirty seven healthy babies killed in a non emergency situation, zero late term abortions needed to save the mother's life, and then ten babies killed because they had something wrong with them. They had some kind of disability. So, you know, this is now really clear that in Victoria and South Australia, where we have data, healthy babies are being killed right up until birth.
Joanna Howe:It's not to save the mother's life, and it is purely because we allow abortion up to birth on demand. And the other side's gonna hate that language, but that is the reality of what we have. So what can we do about it? Because this is brutal and when I found out about it, it blew my mind and I guess it produced in me over time a desire to really call this out and share the information and to speak out about what's going on. So what I'm gonna ask you guys to do is firstly, subscribe to my YouTube channel if you haven't done that already.
Joanna Howe:Hit the like button and comment because that helps the algorithm to to get it to reach more people. Share the video with people, but most importantly, speak to your friends and family about this issue because I had my opinion changed on abortion because somebody spoke to me about it. I used to be pro choice and you can change people's minds too. The other thing you can do is write letters to federal and state politicians, health ministers in those states, and your local MP. Tell them what you know about abortion up to birth, the fact that it's legal in every state and territory, and demand that they do something to protect the human rights of these children.
Joanna Howe:Thank you, and see you next time.
