“Meet Baby Olivia”: Anti-abortion groups target sex education classes in the United States | US News

Awashed in soft peach-colored light, the baby yawns, puts his thumb in his mouth and bats his eyes at the camera. As the camera pans away from her, an umbilical cord and the fleshy tunnel surrounding the infant come into focus. It’s not a newborn: it’s a fetus in a disembodied womb.

“This is Olivia,” says a British female voice. “Even though she hasn’t met the outside world yet, she’s already had an incredible journey.”

Say hello to “Meet Baby Olivia,” an animated video made by an American anti-abortion group that purports to depict human embryonic and fetal development with the alleged aim of converting young people to the anti-abortion cause. The video – or something very close to it – will be mandatory for public school students. in two states, with several more potentially in the works.

Last year, North Dakota became the first state in the nation to pass a law requiring schools to show “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 broadcast as part of schools’ sex education curriculum.

So far in 2024, lawmakers in at least 10 other states have introduced bills that would require schools to show students “Meet Baby Olivia,” or, in language that appears repeatedly in bills, law, a “similar high-quality computer-generated rendering or rendering.” animation” that shows “each stage of human development inside the womb, noting significant markers of cell growth and organ development for each significant marker from pregnancy until birth.” Including Tennessee legislation, bills in at least five of the states quote “Meet Baby Olivia” by name.

Classrooms are a growing front in the post-Roe v. Wade abortion wars, as conservative activists have increasingly mixed their attacks on abortion with their distaste for sex education that discusses alternatives to premarital abstinence. But medical professionals have accused the anti-abortion group behind “Meet Baby Olivia” of spreading propaganda, even disinformation, in order to convert young people to their cause.

Seven of the 12 states where bills have been introduced or passed ban almost all abortions. So far this year, state legislatures have considered at least 135 sex education bills — a record number, according to a CNN analysis. Sixty percent of them would restrict sex education in some way.

Live Action has denied accusations that any lines from “Meet Baby Olivia” are inaccurate.

“’Baby Olivia’ has nothing to do with abortion. The word ‘abortion’ is never mentioned,” said Noah Brandt, Live Action’s vice president of communications. “’Baby Olivia’ is an important place for states like Tennessee and North Dakota to look to, to continue to do the work of educating both biology and life, because they have already protected life, now it’s about teaching people when life begins. and respect that.

A discreet success story

The emergence of “Meet Baby Olivia” legislation comes at a precarious time for the anti-abortion movement. Since the overturning of Roe, support for abortion rights has increased, even in conservative states. A few Republicans have tried to downplay their opposition to the procedure, or even supported efforts to protect it, in a sharp break from decades of marching alongside the anti-abortion movement.

But while the anti-abortion movement is failing, the “Meet Baby Olivia” bills are a quiet success. Abortion opponents overturned Roe by spending years pushing for state-level abortion restrictions; if a restriction succeeded in one state, lawmakers in other states would copy and paste its language and introduce their own versions. This strategy has eaten away at access to abortion.

In the “Meet Baby Olivia” bills, observers see a similar strategy at work — and evidence of mission creep.

“The anti-abortion, anti-sex and (anti)reproductive health movements have focused on other areas and broadened their scope in terms of what they are concerned with and what they are working on,” said Kimya Forouzan, associate main policy. state issues at the Guttmacher Institute, which supports abortion rights. Although Guttmacher monitors sexual and reproductive health restrictions, Forouzan said she has never before seen legislation comparable to the “Meet Baby Olivia” bill.

“We have seen many attempts to omit information from sex education,” she said. “But this is such an explicit effort to bring a misleading curriculum into sex education.”

The American College of Obstetricians and Gynecologists, America’s leading membership organization for obstetricians and gynecologists, released a statement. denouncing “Meet Baby Olivia” as “designed to manipulate viewers’ emotions rather than share evidence-based scientific information about embryonic and fetal development.”

The organization continued: “Many claims made in this video are not consistent with scientific fact, but rather reflect the biased and ideological perspectives of the extremists who created the video. »

In “Meet Baby Olivia,” the narrator says that life begins when a sperm fertilizes an egg, but there is no scientific consensus on when life begins — and it is as much a philosophical and religious question than scientific. The narrator also says that “Olivia’s heartbeat can be detected” about three weeks after fertilization, or five weeks after the first day of a woman’s last period, which is what the medical establishment uses to calculate the duration of a pregnancy. At this stage of pregnancy, the embryo has not yet fully developed heart.

“I would say we might start to see activity that could be cardiac activity, perhaps around six to seven weeks of pregnancy,” said Dr. Stacy Sun, a New York-based obstetrician-gynecologist and member of Physicians for Reproductive Health. “The question is whether or not it’s a heartbeat, because it’s not really a fully formed heart.

“If we get down to the basics of what is medically accurate, these words are not medically accurate,” she added.

“Meet Baby Olivia” also claims that 20 weeks after fertilization – or 22 weeks pregnant – “With a lot of help, the babies survived outside the womb.”

Fetal viability, or the point at which an infant can survive outside the womb, is generally dated to around 22 weeks after fertilization, or 24 weeks of pregnancy. Although there have been cases of babies surviving after being born only 20 weeks after fertilization, fetal viability is attenuated with each individual pregnancy, especially since many areas of the United States lack facilities or services. adequate expertise in obstetrics and gynecology, which could help women giving birth. too early. According to Guinness World Records, the most premature baby to ever survive was born 19 weeks and 1 day after fertilization. He remained in an Alabama hospital for 275 days.

“There are so many nuances when it comes to whether or not a baby can survive, especially when they are so young,” Sun said. “Even if they survive, they don’t have a great quality of life. The effect can be devastating on the person carrying the pregnancy, the baby.

On the “Meet Baby Olivia” YouTube page, LiveAction says the video was “reviewed by accredited medical professionals.” Two of the professionals listed as reviewers of “Meet Baby Olivia” work for the Charlotte Lozier Institute, the research arm of the powerful anti-abortion group Susan B Anthony Pro-Life America. Another is a doctor who worked for the American College of Pediatricians at the time, an organization that the Southern Poverty Law Center has labeled an anti-LGBTQ hate group.

“Our medical recommendations are evidence-based and aim to promote the optimal physical and emotional health and well-being of children. Any label claiming otherwise is simply false,” the American College of Pediatricians said in a statement. On its website, which states that the group is not anti-LGBTQ+, the organization claims that children are better off when raised by heterosexual married couples rather than same-sex couples and that “the Same-sex sexual behaviors are associated with serious physical and psychological health. risks at considerably high rates.

In at least two states, West Virginia and Iowa, “Meet Baby Olivia” bills have passed a legislative chamber, but legislatures in both states have now closed their doors for the year. Most legislatures that introduced the “Meet Baby Olivia” bill have either finished their 2024 sessions or are expected to do so in the coming weeks.

Compared to the rest of the country, states that have introduced “Meet Baby Olivia” bills this year – which also include Georgia, Hawaii, Kentucky, Michigan, Missouri, Pennsylvania and South Carolina – have less comprehensive sex education policies, according to Siecus: Sex Ed for Social Change, a decades-old organization that publishes best practice guidelines for comprehensive sex education. (None of the states earned more than a C grade in the Siecus ranking system.) Most states do not require sex education in public schools to be medically accurate, culturally appropriate or unbiased, according to Guttmacher . Only four states say sex education cannot promote religion.

Brandt argues that information about “human development” should be included in sex education, because “the creation of a new human” is a potential consequence of sex.

When asked whether the anti-abortion movement should become more involved in shaping sex education, Brandt said, “Yes, definitely, yes. »