(LifeSiteNews) — According to a July report from the Catholic Herald, the Australian government is paying women who have late-term abortions as the result of a legal loophole “by which mothers who meet income requirements are eligible to access a one-off payment if they experience a stillbirth.” Based on government policy, it turns out, babies that are killed in the womb at later gestational ages can qualify mothers for this payment.
The government policy dictates that “to be considered stillborn, a baby … had to have a gestation period of at least 20 weeks or weighed at least 400 grams at their birth.” The Catholic Herald noted that this means that “payments of $4,225 Australian dollars (around $2,770 USD or £2,060 GBP)” have been granted to women who aborted their babies after 20 weeks. Like Canada, abortion is legal in Australia up until birth, but with two doctors being required to sign off.
Like Canada, about 100,000 babies are killed by abortion each year in Australia, and 80% of late-term abortions in South Australia are perpetrated on healthy babies. According to the Catholic Herald:
Dr Joanna Howe, a senior lecturer in law at the University of Adelaide and a prominent pro-life advocate, first raised the alarm after members of the medical profession contacted her to inform her of the practice. Recalling one particularly harrowing story, she told the Adelaide Advertiser: “One midwife was in tears over the phone telling me of a mother who had aborted her healthy 28-week-old baby and was intending to use the payment for a holiday in Bali.”
The South Australian Abortion Action Coalition (SAAAC), a pro-abortion organisation, admitted to supporting the payment being available for those who choose abortion. A spokesperson for the group said that it treats “abortion care as healthcare and recognises the complex impacts on patients who need to access a termination of pregnancy after 20 weeks.”
In short, women who are aborting children who could survive outside the womb are essentially being paid to do so despite the vast majority of those babies being perfectly healthy. In one Queensland hospital, the number of late-term abortions (post-22 weeks) more than doubled between 2010 and 2020.
Late-term abortion has been a subject of some political debate recently in Australia. In 2024, a bill was put forward by Liberal MP Ben Hood in South Australia that would ban abortion after 27 weeks and six weeks, instead mandating that the unwanted babies — who can survive outside the womb — be delivered via induced labor. The bill failed by the narrow margin of 10-9. In February 2025, Greens MP Amanda Cohn introduced the Abortion Reform Bill, attempting to make abortion provision mandatory for medical professionals. The bill was amended, and the mandatory provision of abortion removed.
What is late-term abortion like? In 2007, LifeSiteNews reported on an undercover journalist’s investigation inside a Spanish abortion clinic. The expose was chilling:
For what is probably the first time in history, a television network in Spain has shown an abortion on national television. The video, shot during a hidden-camera exposé on Spain’s abortion industry, shows a nurse injecting deadly poison into the fetus through the vagina of a pregnant woman, who then expels her dead child, about five months old. The doctor immediately covers the body.
“The baby is born dead. His cradle: a trash can,” says the commentator in voice-over on the tape. An abortion of the baby of a second woman is also shown. After showing the second abortion, the commentator remarks. “As soon as the baby is born, the doctor must cover it up. No one looks at it. No one examines it.”
Later, the undercover reporter examines one of the dead children. “Hands, feet, a face. The cadaver of a human being,” the commentator notes. The doctor, a woman, remarks that the baby is 21 weeks old, but says she “never” looks at the bodies of the fetuses.
“Never?” asks the undercover reporter, who is posing as a doctor looking for work at the clinic. “Never,” the woman repeats “Never, never, never again!” When asked why, the doctor says, “Because I don’t like it.” “Of course, you are a mother, I assume, right?” the reporter asks. No answer is given.
In Australia, some women are being paid for subjecting their children to such horrors. In an interview years ago with Mother Jones, the notorious abortionist William Raushbaum revealed his own struggles with the procedure, explaining that he was haunted by a recurring dream “of a fetus trying to hold onto the walls of a uterus by its tiny fingernails.” He tried to reason the dreams away, saying, “What kind of dreams do you think you are going to have?”
