Organ Harvesting: The Dark Side of Medical Practices: Australia, the U.S., and Beyond, By Brian Simpson and Mrs. Vera West
The medical profession, often revered as a bastion of care and ethics, harbours a darker side in both Australia and the United States, where policies and practices surrounding late-term abortions and organ procurement raise profound moral and ethical questions. While these issues differ in context, they share a common thread: systemic incentives and lapses that undermine the sanctity of life and erode trust in healthcare. This discussion examines the troubling allegations in Australia regarding taxpayer-funded payments for late-term abortions and the U.S. organ procurement scandals, contrasting them with the well-documented organ harvesting in communist China, to reveal a broader pattern of ethical failures in modern medicine.
In Australia, particularly South Australia, recent claims amplified by figures like Dr. Joanna Howe suggest a disturbing policy: taxpayer-funded payments for late-term abortions, classified as "stillborn" deliveries to qualify for financial benefits. Posts on X, including from @VigilantFox and @LifeNewsHQ, allege that mothers receive $4,255 (or up to $20,147 for Paid Parental Leave) for abortions after 20 weeks, with one midwife reportedly witnessing a woman planning to use the payment for a Bali vacation. Dr. Howe claims 80% of these abortions in South Australia involve healthy foetuses, delivered dead via injections of potassium chloride or digoxin, a process she describes as "pre-meditated murder."
South Australia's Termination of Pregnancy Act 2021 allows abortions up to 22 weeks and 6 days with one doctor's approval, and beyond that with two doctors' consent, citing risks to the mother's health or foetal anomalies. The South Australian Law Reform Institute (SALRI) reported in 2019 that only 0.1% of abortions occur after 22 weeks, typically for severe foetal abnormalities, and none were recorded beyond 27 weeks in recent data. This contradicts Howe's claim of widespread healthy foetus terminations, suggesting exaggeration, selective framing or lack of data. However, the lack of a national abortion registry and limited transparency in state-level data collection fuels scepticism, as noted in a 2023 Medical Journal of Australia article. The absence of clear public hospital funding for abortion services in South Australia, unlike the ACT's free provision, may push women toward private clinics, where costs and incentives could align with the alleged payment schemes.
The ethical concern lies in the potential for financial incentives to distort medical decisions. If true, classifying late-term abortions as "stillborn" to access payments like the Stillborn Parenting Payment raises questions about transparency and intent. Midwives' reported distress, as cited on X, suggests a system that pressures healthcare workers to comply with morally fraught practices. Even if rare, the possibility of such payments influencing vulnerable women, especially in cases of socioeconomic hardship, echoes philosophical objections to commodifying human life, as articulated by ethicists like Michael Sandel, who warn against market-driven morality.
In the United States, a July 2025 investigation by the Department of Health and Human Services (HHS) uncovered "horrifying" lapses in organ procurement, particularly by a Kentucky-based organ procurement organisation (OPO). The Health Resources and Services Administration (HRSA) found that in 351 cases, 103 showed "concerning features," with 73 patients displaying neurological signs incompatible with organ donation, and 28 potentially alive when procurement began. HHS Secretary Robert F. Kennedy Jr. condemned these practices, citing "poor neurologic assessments, lack of coordination with medical teams, questionable consent practices, and misclassification of causes of death." The investigation, prompted by a reopened case from the Biden era, revealed systemic issues in the Organ Procurement and Transplantation Network (OPTN), including failures to respect family wishes or follow best practices.
The rise of donation after circulatory death (DCD), where organs are procured after life support is withdrawn, has sparked ethical debates. Unlike brain-death donations, DCD relies on subjective assessments of death, raising risks of premature procurement. The 1984 National Organ Transplant Act prohibits payment for organs, but the HHS findings suggest that organisational pressures, not financial incentives, drive these lapses. Bioethicist Arthur Caplan has criticised DCD for its "ethical gray zone," where haste to procure viable organs can blur the line between life and death. The 170 million registered U.S. organ donors, as of 2022, rely on trust in a system now tainted by these revelations, prompting calls for reform from both HHS and Congress.
China's organ harvesting, particularly of prisoners and dissidents, is a well-documented human rights atrocity, far surpassing the scale and intent of issues in Australia or the U.S. Reports from the UN and organisations like the China Tribunal (2020), confirm that Falun Gong practitioners, Uyghurs, and others are subjected to forced organ extraction, often while alive, to supply a lucrative transplant market. Unlike Australia's alleged financial incentives or the U.S.'s procedural failures, China's practices are state-sanctioned, deliberate, and tied to political oppression. The scale, tens of thousands of organs annually, dwarfs Western controversies, but all three cases share a disregard for the sanctity of life, whether through policy, negligence, or malice.
The Australian and U.S. cases, while less egregious than China's, reveal a troubling trend: systems that prioritise outcomes, whether abortion access or organ supply, over rigorous ethical safeguards. In Australia, the lack of clear data and the potential for financial incentives to influence abortion decisions mirror the U.S.'s opaque organ procurement practices, where haste and poor oversight endanger lives. Both contrast with China's overt exploitation but reflect a broader erosion of trust in medical systems. Philosophers like Kant would argue that such practices, even if unintended, dehumanise individuals by reducing them to means rather than ends.
The Australian claims, while unverified, demand scrutiny of payment policies and their impact on vulnerable women. In the U.S., HHS's reforms must address DCD's ethical ambiguities and enforce stricter oversight. Globally, the medical profession must confront its capacity for harm, as seen in China, to restore trust. As Kant's categorical imperative suggests, treating individuals as ends requires rejecting practices that commodify or exploit life, whether through cash bonuses, premature organ retrieval, or state-driven harvesting.
Australia's alleged abortion payments and the U.S.'s organ procurement scandals, though distinct, expose a dark underbelly in Western medicine: systems that, intentionally or not, incentivise or enable ethical breaches. While far removed from China's atrocities, these issues demand accountability to prevent further erosion of trust. Transparency, data collection, and robust ethical frameworks are essential to ensure medicine upholds life, not exploits it.
https://www.vigilantfox.com/p/rfk-jr-drops-bone-chilling-bombshell
https://www.lifenews.com/2025/07/23/hospitals-caught-harvesting-organs-from-living-patients/
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