Video of fetus in disembodied womb required viewing for students in two states, as classroom becomes latest front in post-Roe abortion wars
Awash in soft, peach-colored light, the infant yawns, sticks her thumb in her mouth and flutters her eyes at the camera. As the camera pulls away from her, an umbilical cord and the fleshy tunnel surrounding the infant comes into focus. This isn’t a newborn baby: it’s a fetus in a disembodied womb.
“This is Olivia,” a British female voice narrates. “Though she has yet to greet the outside world, she has already completed an amazing journey.”
Say hello to “Meet Baby Olivia”, an animated video made by an American anti-abortion group that purports to depict humans’ embryonic and fetal development in an alleged effort to convert young people to the anti-abortion cause. The video – or something very close to it – will be required viewing for public school students in two states, with several more potentially on the way.
Last year, North Dakota became the first state in the nation to pass a law mandating that schools screen “Meet Baby Olivia” or a similar video. This year, Tennessee enacted its own “Meet Baby Olivia” law, requiring that “Meet Baby Olivia” or something like it be shown as part of schools’ sex education curriculum.
First of all, video is inaccurate as you would have guessed:
https://www.nashvillepost.com/business/health_care/ob-gyn-points-out-inaccuracies-in-baby-olivia-human-development-video/article_737ebbfa-ec9d-11ee-8493-8fcaeed05070.html
If they really want a meet baby Olivia video, besides correcting its inaccuracies, I would suggest we have a meet mother Dorota video. It would teach students about how mother Dorota could have had her life saved with an abortion, however laws and court rulings by men ensured doctors would go to jail if they didn’t wait until she wasnt clearly in danger of losing her life before the abortion was performed. It turns out if you wait until someone’s life is definitely in danger as most of these laws now require, well then their life is definitely in danger and they might still die at that point no matter what the doctors do. There’s no magic point of, now the doctors know 100% you will die without the abortion and there’s a 100% chance they can pull you back and you’ll be fine.
We could also learn about the trauma of carrying a fetus all the way to term even though it has a horrific developmental malformation that means it will immediately die on delivery, or never even be able to make it all the way to term and most likely die in utero. And how these pregnancies often increase the risk of serious complications for the mother if they continue to be carried. Heck there’s a lot we could teach about, I could go on.
https://www.politico.eu/article/poland-dorota-lalik-death-braces-for-abortion-protests-as-doctors-become-centre-of-storm/
I can’t upvote this enough. Political ideals should not stand between doctors and patients seeking necessary medical care. And FFS, if you’re going to force students to watch a video about fetal development in class, you should be required to ensure that the information in that video is as accurate as possible.