Detractors have called the ‘aborted baby bonus’ scandal fake news. But whistleblower testimony, disappearing documents, and troubling admissions from government agencies suggest otherwise.
(The Daily Declaration) Earlier this week (July 22, 2025), bombshell revelations surfaced that the Australian government is paying a ‘baby bonus’ of more than $4,200 to women who choose late-term abortion to end the life of their healthy unborn child.
First reported by pro-life advocate Dr Joanna Howe and later covered by The Daily Declaration, this disturbing welfare provision is possible thanks to a loophole in Centrelink’s definition of a stillborn baby.
Even worse, payments of over $20,000 are available to mothers who opt instead for Parental Leave Pay on the premise that their aborted baby was stillborn.
With the exception of a single article in The Advertiser last year, the legacy press is refusing to touch this story — a curious silence given the overwhelming public interest in the scandal: an X thread I published on Wednesday has almost reached 1 million views.
Unsurprisingly, detractors have rushed to dismiss the revelations as fake news. However, the evidence presented by Dr Howe is compelling — and deserves a closer look.
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Here are four reasons to believe her claims (and four lines of inquiry the national media would pursue if they were actually doing their job).
1. Centrelink’s definition of a stillbirth
As Dr Howe highlighted in her video, Centrelink’s broad definition of a stillbirth is the means by which people are accessing their aborted baby bonus.
The Services Australia website explains that “to be eligible for our payments, a stillbirth needs to meet our definition” — and their definition is as follows:
A late-term abortion — which, in Australia, is most often performed by injecting the baby’s heart with potassium chloride or digoxin, followed by the induction of labour and the delivery of the dead infant — clearly meets that definition.
Dr Howe’s key contention is that Services Australia has no carve-out to say the stillbirth has to be natural as opposed to intentional. All that’s required is a letter from the hospital confirming that the baby was delivered stillborn.
2. Department of Social Services’ non-denial
The lone article mentioned above was authored by the courageous Kathryn Birmingham, and originally appeared on the front page of The Advertiser on December 23 last year under the bold headline, “$4200 TO ABORT BABY”.
There, Birmingham presented the facts just as I have above, without hedging behind qualifiers like “allegedly” or softening the seriousness of what’s taking place.
She also reached out to the Department of Social Services (DSS) — the department responsible for Centrelink policies and payments — and was given a very conspicuous non-denial.
“There is no evidence to support the claim that policy settings incentivise late-term abortion,” a DSS spokesman told her.
But that wasn’t the question being asked. What’s at issue is if Centrelink is making the $4,200 payments to post-abortive mothers. And the rest of the spokesman’s response left that question wide open:
3. SA Health’s quietly retracted cheat sheet
In 2013, Catholic pro-life advocate Bernard Gaynor published a disturbing medical form on his website which was given to him “by a family hurt by abortion”.
Issued by the South Australian Department of Health, the yellow A4 document provided detailed instructions for post-abortive women on how to apply for the Stillborn Baby Payment (then known as the Bereavement Payment) or Paid Parental Leave by registering their abortion as a stillbirth.
As with more recent revelations, The Advertiser was the only media outlet to report on the scandal, publishing a brief article titled, “Women having late abortions told to ‘apply for Centrelink baby benefits’.”
Notably, SA Health did not deny the practice. Instead, a spokesman told The Advertiser that the form had been withdrawn in June — curiously coinciding with the timing of Gaynor’s exposé.
“The information sheet is no longer being provided by the Pregnancy Advisory Centre,” the spokesman said — a glaring admission that the department had indeed both produced and distributed the form.
The form’s withdrawal 12 years ago does not prove the practice ended. Instead, it appears to have gone underground — that is, until medical staff started blowing the whistle.
This is where Dr Howe’s report becomes particularly significant.
4. Dr Joanna Howe’s confidential sources
In her report, Dr Howe speaks of at least two medical personnel who have alerted her regarding the aborted baby bonus.
One is a South Australian hospital administrator who said midwives are “traumatised and shocked” by the rise in late-term abortions of healthy babies. She revealed staff are being effectively “forced to sign off on Centrelink forms” so women can claim payments — a process adding “a double level of trauma” by co-opting them into a system that financially rewards elective abortions.
The second is a midwife who described a traumatic late-term abortion in which the mother stated she would use her aborted baby bonus to fund a holiday to Bali — a remark that left the midwife in tears after delivering the baby stillborn.
As Dr Howe explains, her sources are forced to remain anonymous because whistleblower protections in Australia only apply to those exposing illegal activity. And, since both late-term abortion and claiming Centrelink payments for them are legal, medical staff who speak out about what they’re witnessing risk losing their jobs.
Dr Howe is set to release further documentary evidence of the aborted baby bonus, and plans to address the issue in more depth on her YouTube channel next week.
“This upcoming Monday on The Dr Jo Show I will reveal an explosive letter from a senior Labor Minister confirming that women who have an ‘intentional abortion’ after 20 weeks can access the $4200 Stillborn Parenting payment,” she wrote in an email sent to supporters today.
For now, concerned Australians are encouraged to sign Dr Howe’s petition, share this story on social media, and pray for God’s mercy on our nation.
If you’re facing an unplanned pregnancy or grieving an abortion, help is available.
Editor's note: This article was published by The Daily Declaration and is reprinted with permission.
