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

Joanna Howe posts on social media that if purported images of human foetuses are in fact sugar gliders, ‘it doesn’t actually matter’

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The anti-abortion activist Joanna Howe has conceded she may have used a “scam” email featuring a picture of sugar glider joeys, referring to them as human foetuses, to promote her views – but it “was an insignificant detail”.

In a video posted to Facebook on Wednesday afternoon, Howe said it appeared she had been “scammed” when someone emailed her claiming to give details about their medical abortion, including an image that Howe referred to as twin girls she called Ruth and Emma.

Howe had previously posted a video on social media on 21 May about the email and the picture, which she also added to a poster promoting a rally in Sydney next week.

She said in the video doctors had “abandoned” the woman after giving her a medical abortion, that she was left “alone, in her bathroom, giving birth to her twin babies on to the bathroom floor”.

Guardian Australia revealed on Wednesday that the image was very unlikely to be of human foetuses, and was almost certainly a screenshot of sugar glider joeys taken from a TikTok video.

Howe said in an Instagram post on Wednesday critics “hone [sic] in on these little like insignificant details when it doesn’t actually matter because we know that little things like Ruth and Emma are being killed every day in this country”.

“Even if … the picture of Ruth and Emma is sugar gliders, like, does it really even fucking matter?” she said in the post.

Later on Wednesday, she wrote on Facebook that “it now appears the photo I was sent really was of sugar gliders”. But in a video she said whether “Ruth and Emma” were sugar gliders “doesn’t actually matter”.

“Because there are thousands of Ruth and Emmas,” she said. “We rally for them.”

Guardian Australia did not know who was behind the email before publication of Wednesday’s story. Digital analysis and expert advice led to the conclusion there was an “extremely low” chance the image was of human embryos and that it was very likely to be of sugar gliders, or possibly some other small marsupial.

After the story was published on Wednesday, a person contacted Guardian Australia claiming they had emailed Howe under the pseudonym “Lynn”, with a screenshot from a TikTok about sugar gliders, to test whether Howe did basic factchecking.

The emails, seen by Guardian Australia, did not include anything about Lynn being abandoned or left alone to give birth on a bathroom floor.

Howe has worked with state and federal MPs on various pieces of legislation to restrict access to abortion. She believes all abortion should be banned, that it is murder, and that “everybody involved” should face criminal penalties.

Earlier this year, authorities sought to remove an image of a foetus Howe and other anti-abortion activists were circulating, calling it “baby Samuel” and saying a whistleblower had taken it in a room for grieving parents at a Townsville hospital.

The posts are still up on Howe’s social media, and an inquiry into who took the photo and gave it to her did not find out who was responsible.

After receiving the emails from Lynn, Howe said she would rename the Sydney rally – where the One Nation MP Barnaby Joyce is due to speak – “the rally for Emma and Ruth”.

She was still using the image and referring to “twin babies Emma and Ruth” on Thursday morning, despite having acknowledged that the image appeared to be of sugar gliders, and having been told about the claim that the email was a hoax.

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

She said it was “gross” to insinuate that Lynn was lying.

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

However, many people had already noted on Howe’s social media posts that the “babies” did not look at all like a nine-week foetus.

They started asking questions about whether the foetuses were human, how anyone could tell that they were girls, and cast doubt on the credibility of the story.

Some commenters – and experts Guardian Australia spoke to – wondered where the blood or other tissues you would expect had gone. When asked, Howe repeated the alleged hoaxer’s words – that they had “washed the pad” and seen them.

Howe did not respond to a request for comment.