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

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 also 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. 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. However, Howe refuses to acknowledge the criticism, stating that the mission matters more than the verification behind the previously unverified information.

It is revealed that 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.