The claim made by Howe that “45 healthy and viable babies have been killed” is entirely disinformation designed to have people believe 45 terminations occurred under the Termination of Pregnancy Act 2021 (SA) beyond 28 weeks’ gestation which is not the case.
Summary:
- Professor Joanna Howe’s assertion that “45 healthy and viable babies have been killed” under the Termination of Pregnancy Act 2021 is critically flawed.
- The 2022 and 2023 SA Abortion Reporting Committee Annual Reports, specifically tables 6a and 6, do not substantiate claims regarding foetal viability. The reports focus on procedural data without explicit medical context concerning foetal health or viability.
- Viability is complex and involves factors beyond gestational age, such as physiological and developmental markers. Howe’s oversimplification misleads the public about the medical realities of late-term abortions.
Prof. Joanna Howe used data from the 2022 (p. 10) and 2023 (p. 8) SA Abortion Reporting Committee Annual Reports on Abortion in South Australia (specifically table 6a and table 6). These tables do not provide evidence to support Howe’s claim on the health and viability of any foetus.
No information contained in these annual reports provides any detail on viability of any foetus. The only mention of “viable” in the annual reports is provided in the definition of the ‘termination of pregnancy’ as –
“The intentional expulsion of a product of conception from the uterus either by medication or instrumentation, with the intention being the death of the embryo or foetus. This includes induction of labour without expectation of fetal survival, for example in the case of severe pre-eclampsia at pre-viable gestations or prolonged rupture of membranes with severe infection.” (p.12, 2023)
As outlined in the definition of the ‘termination of pregnancy’ termination includes the induction of labour without an expectation of foetal survival. An induction prior to full-term, as outlined in section 6.2a of the Private Member ‘Termination of Pregnancy (Termination and Live Births) Amendment Bill 2024’, can depending on the expectation of foetal survival constitute a termination of pregnancy. Further the tables utilised by Howe only provide the number of terminations performed after 22 weeks and 6 days gestation.
Without any further information it is merely an unrealistic assumption to claim every single one of the 45 terminations referenced involved a “healthy and viable” foetus. Viability is not merely a gestational measurement and according to the American College of Obstetricians and Gynaecologists the concept of viability is regularly misrepresented.
Lastly, the ‘Termination Of Pregnancy (Termination and Live Birth) Amendment Bill 2024’ would prohibit any terminations after 27 weeks and 6 days, not 22 weeks and 6 days. SA Health have stated that no terminations have occurred after 28 weeks and 6 days and thus it is highly unlikely the Bill would have changed the outcome in the 45 terminations quoted by Howe.
The claim made by Howe that “45 healthy and viable babies have been killed” is entirely disinformation designed to have people believe 45 terminations occurred under the Termination of Pregnancy Act 2021 (SA) beyond 28 weeks’ gestation – which is not the case.
Halliday, S, Romanis, E, Proost, L & Verweij, E 2023, ‘The (Mis)Use of Fetal Viability as The Determinant of Non-Criminal Abortion in The Netherlands and England and Wales’, Medical Law Review, vol. 31, no. 4, doi: 10.1093/medlaw/fwad015 (available: https://academic.oup.com/medlaw/article/31/4/538/7186895).
Romanis, E 2020, ‘Is ‘Viability’ Viable? Abortion, Conceptual Confusion and the Law in England and Wales and the United States’, Journal of Law and the Biosciences, vol. 7, no. 1, doi: 10.1093/jlb/lsaa059. (available: https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC8249091/)
Lewkowitz, A & Ayala, N 2022, ‘The Politicisation of Fetal Viability’, 14 July, Time, available: https://time.com/6196775/fetus-prioritized-before-pegnancy-viable/.