CV NEWS FEED // Tennessee public schools are one state Senate vote away from being required to show children a medically accurate video depicting fetal development.
CatholicVote reported in March that Tennessee, Iowa, and West Virginia were considering approving bills that would require middle and high school students to watch Live Action’s “Baby Olivia” video. The video shows different stages of fetal development, complete with timestamps and a narrator describing the baby’s growth.
According to The Tennessean, the bill only needs to pass one more vote from the Tennessee Senate before the video becomes mandatory in schools in at least 78 counties across the state.
The Senate Education Committee passed the bill 6-1 on March 20, and the state House passed it 67-23 on March 18. If the bill makes it past the final vote, it will go to Republican Gov. Bill Lee for approval.
The Tennesean noted that though the legislation references the Baby Olivia video, the bill allows any other fetal development video to be shown instead.
CatholicVote additionally reported that the legislation has been met with opposition from pro-abortion advocates and several Democratic lawmakers in all the states in which it is being considered. AP News published an article in February, calling the video “deceptive and problematic for a young audience.”
Ashley Coffield, CEO of Planned Parenthood of Tennessee and North Mississippi, pushed back against the legislation and called it “unscientific and emotionally manipulative.”
“It parrots the same lies and misinformation that anti-abortion groups and lawmakers used to impose a total abortion ban on Tennessee,” she said, according to The Tennessean.
In a February news release, Live Action founder and President Lila Rose maintained that the video is medically accurate and was created in collaboration with a panel of pro-life doctors, which included fetal and embryonic experts.
The Tennessee House Republican Caucus posted on X on March 19 that “The Baby Olivia video is a medically reviewed, detailed depiction of the growth of a child from conception to birth.”
They continued:
It tells the factual, biological truth about when human life begins. It is unsettling for pro-choice Americans and those at [the American College of Obstetricians and Gynecologists] because it shows what they would otherwise choose to ignore, which is the fact that from zygote to embryo to fetus to baby to toddler and so on, we are talking about human beings.
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