Copyright truthout
Earlier this month, Ohio State Rep. Melanie Miller (R-Ashland) introduced legislation that would require Ohio public schools to show a video about “Baby Olivia,” inaccurately detailing fetal development, to students as young as the third grade. Abortion rights group Reproaction notes that the “Baby Olivia” video claims that fetuses experience hiccups at seven weeks gestation, when scientists and medical professionals have repeatedly stated that fetal hiccups don’t begin until 23 weeks. That kind of deception is a key tactic of Live Action, an anti-abortion group that produced the video. Lila Rose, the president of Live Action, has inaccurately said that abortion is “never medically necessary,” and supports forcing rape and incest victims to bear their abusers’ child. David Daleiden, who infamously released doctored videos smearing Planned Parenthood and was convicted for illegally recording protected communications between patients and reproductive health care providers, is a former Live Action staffer. The “Baby Olivia” video uses computer-generated images to depict frequently inaccurate and emotionally manipulative images of fetal development. In a statement to CNN last year, the American College of Obstetricians and Gynecologists (ACOG) said, “Like much anti-abortion misinformation, the ‘Baby Olivia’ video is designed to manipulate the emotions of viewers rather than to share evidence-based, scientific information about embryonic and fetal development.” The legislation introduced by Miller isn’t new but is the latest attempt by anti-abortion Republicans to undercut consistently high public support for legal abortion. In 2023, North Dakota became the first state to enact legislation mandating so-called “fetal development education.” Last year, Tennessee Republicans managed to pass a bill that requires public schools to show either an ultrasound or a video of fetal development in sex education classes in the state’s schools. So far, six states have enacted this kind of legislation. Now, Ohio Republicans seek to join them. These videos aren’t produced by OB-GYNs or scientists. They aren’t based on medical information. By using a seemingly anodyne tactic in order to cunningly and covertly attack abortion rights, they are a sinister tool of anti-abortion propaganda. This horrifying step in anti-abortion propaganda is a response to abortion rights’ enduring popularity in the U.S. A recent poll by Pew reveals that 63 percent of Americans say that abortion should be legal in all or most cases. Referendums on abortion rights have won in nearly every race in which they’ve been on the ballot since Roe v. Wade was overturned in June 2022, even in deep red states like Montana and Kansas. Voters across the political spectrum want abortion to be safe and legal. If they planned to win a culture war on the legality of abortion, abortion opponents have decidedly failed. Now, abortion opponents want to force public schools to show videos like “Baby Olivia” to children as a means of indoctrinating and propagandizing them with junk science. If you can’t win over voters in the court of public opinion, why not try brainwashing children? If abortion opponents really wanted the nation’s children to be properly educated about anatomy and biology, they wouldn’t be opposed to comprehensive sex education. They wouldn’t be attacking transgender youth and eradicating their access to health care. They wouldn’t be attacking scientific evidence and research, and promoting nonsense vaccine conspiracy theories. “Fetal development education” isn’t really aimed at educating children. This is a blatant attempt to brainwash young children — many of whom at the third-grade level may not even understand “where babies come from” yet — against abortion with an emotionally manipulative, misleading, and utterly nonsensical understanding of reproductive science. As always, attacks on abortion are about so much more than abortion. This kind of legislation is part of the broader Republican effort to undermine public support for science and scientific institutions, to extend the grip of insidious conspiracy theories in place of facts and reason. It’s much easier for an authoritarian to rule if the public he’s ruling over no longer believes what they once knew to be real, if they question science as a conspiracy, if they replace critical thinking with autocratic fiction. The “Baby Olivia” video aims to obscure the truth of abortions: people have always had them and they always will. Regardless of what any individual thinks about fetal development or “life,” a fetus at seven weeks cannot exist outside the womb, and it certainly can’t experience hiccups. And since Dobbs, real, living, actual people have died because they have been denied access to life-saving abortion care. This isn’t conjecture, and it isn’t hyperbole. It’s real. It’s true. It’s a fact. And abortion opponents don’t want your kids to know that, because if they did, they would be horrified, just like you should be.
