Anti-abortion activist concedes pictures of human foetuses may have been sugar glider joeys | Australia news

Anti-abortion activist Joanna Howe acknowledged that she may have used a “spoof” email containing an image of sugar glider babies and referring to them as human fetuses to support her views, but this was a “minor detail”.

In a video posted to Facebook Wednesday afternoon, Howe said she was “scammed” after someone sent her an email claiming to provide details about a medical abortion; this includes a painting in which Howe refers to twin girls whom he names Ruth and Emma.

Howe had previously posted a video about the email and photo on social media on May 21 and included it in a poster promoting a rally in Sydney next week.

In the video, he said that doctors “abandoned” the woman after performing a medical abortion, and that the woman “was left alone in the bathroom and gave birth to her twin babies on the bathroom floor.”

Guardian Australia explained on Wednesday that the image was highly unlikely to be of human fetuses and was almost certainly a screenshot of sugar glider joeys taken from a TikTok video.

“I know,” Howe said in an Instagram post about critics on Wednesday [sic] “We focus on these little, insignificant details when they don’t really matter because we know that little things like Ruth and Emma are killed every day in this country.”

“Even if the picture of Ruth and Emma is a sugar glider, does that really matter?” he said.

“It appears that the photo sent to me is actually of sugar gliders,” he wrote on Facebook later Wednesday. But he said in a video that “it doesn’t really matter” whether “Ruth and Emma” are sugar gliders.

“Because there are thousands of Ruths and Emmas,” he said. “We are rallying for them”

Guardian Australia did not know who was behind the email before the story was published on Wednesday. Digital analysis and expert advice led to the conclusion that the image was “extremely unlikely” to be of a human embryo, while it was very likely to be of sugar gliders or possibly another small marsupial.

After the story was published on Wednesday, a person contacted Guardian Australia claiming they had sent Howe an email under the pseudonym “Lynn” with a screenshot from TikTok about sugar gliders to test whether Howe was doing basic fact-checking.

The emails seen by Guardian Australia contained nothing to suggest that Lynn was abandoned or left alone to give birth on the bathroom floor.

Howe has worked with state and federal lawmakers on various legislation to restrict access to abortion. He believes that all abortion should be banned, that it is murder and that “everyone involved” should face criminal penalties.

Earlier this year, authorities attempted to remove the image of the fetus that Howe and other anti-abortion activists had been circulating; They called it “baby Samuel” and said a tipster had taken it to a room for grieving parents at a Townsville hospital.

The posts are still up on Howe’s social media, and an investigation into who took the photo and gave it to him has not found who is responsible.

After receiving emails from Lynn, Howe said he would change the name of the Sydney rally at which One Nation MP Barnaby Joyce would speak to the “Emma and Ruth rally”.

Even though he acknowledged the image was of sugar gliders and was told the email was allegedly a hoax, he was still using the image and referring to “twin babies Emma and Ruth” on Thursday morning.

“The brave woman who shared this with me, ‘Lynn’, was too upset to do a public interview,” he wrote on social media.

He said it was “disgusting” to imply that Lynn was lying.

The person claiming to be Lynn told Guardian Australia they had hoped to hold off on revealing the hoax to see if Howe would go so far as to print “Ruth and Emma” corflutes and posters for the rally.

However, many people noted in Howe’s social media posts that the “babies” did not look like a nine-week-old fetus at all.

They began to ask questions about whether the fetuses were human, how to tell if they were girls, and cast doubt on the credibility of the story.

Some commentators and experts Guardian Australia spoke to wondered where the blood or other tissue went. When asked, Howe said they “washed the pad” and saw the alleged imposter.

How did not respond to a request for comment.