(LifeSiteNews) — On Tuesday, Tennessee Governor Bill Lee signed the ‘Baby Olivia Act’ into law, requiring public schools to show school children a “high-quality, computer-generated animation or high-definition ultrasound” of unborn babies developing in the womb.
The law cites Live Action’s computer-animated “Baby Olivia” video depicting fertilization and fetal development from conception as an example of an animation that would meet the law’s requirements, which include the depiction of “the development of the brain, heart, and other vital organs in early fetal development.”
BREAKING: The Baby Olivia Act has been signed into law in Tennessee.
This law ensures that over 1 million TN public school students will be taught scientifically accurate information about when life begins using world-class educational materials like Live Action’s Baby Olivia.… pic.twitter.com/3nXRer4M0f
— Lila Rose (@LilaGraceRose) April 26, 2024
Family life curriculum is required by Tennessee law in all counties where the teen birth rate exceeds 19.5 per 1,000 females between the ages of 15 and 19, which amount to 78 of the state’s 95 counties, according to the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC).
The Baby Olivia video, shared to X by Live Action founder and president Lila Rose, starts by depicting the moment of fertilization, explaining that “This is the moment that life begins,” and that once fertilization occurs, a baby’s “gender, ethnicity, hair color, eye color and countless traits are already determined.”
The video goes on to depict milestone events of early fetal development with vivid computer animation, including the emergence of a detectable heartbeat at 22 days from conception, and recordable brain activity at six weeks from fertilization.
“[Baby Olivia] can bring her hands together at 7 ½ weeks, and separate fingers and toes emerge. She can also begin to hiccup,” the video explains.
Live Action has verified that the video accurately depicts fetal development, citing the review and certification of “leading OBGYNs and medical professionals” including Dr. David Bolender, who has a PhD in Cell Biology, Neurobiology & Anatomy, and Michelle Cretella, MD, Executive Director of the American College of Pediatricians. The information in the video was derived from the Endowment for Human Development, a bioethics nonprofit.
The video makes clear that it measures the days and weeks of a baby’s development from fertilization, and not from a woman’s last menstrual period (LMP), which is commonly used by doctors to determine gestational age. Critics of the Baby Olivia video have taken issue with this metric, claiming that it is misleading. A woman’s LMP adds two weeks to fertilization, the video notes.
“It is a scientific fact that human life begins at conception,” said Republican state Rep. Gino Bulso, the bill’s lead sponsor, in March. “At fertilization, you’ve got all 46 chromosomes, you have the entire genetic makeup of the child, and from that point on, it’s simply a matter of growth and development. So if you’ve got something that’s growing from the moment of conception on, I have no idea how anybody could say that you did not have life. You obviously, you’ve got life, because something is growing.”
Despite its scientific accuracy and sophisticated animation, vehemently pro-abortion individuals have taken umbrage at the Baby Olivia video, claiming it is “propaganda.”
“This cutesy shiny pink video is offensively childish. It diminishes the complexity of reproductive health. It’s insulting to women and it’s insulting to the medical profession,” Sen. Heidi Campbell, D-Nashville, told The Tennessean. “Pregnancy is a medical condition, and it’s a serious one. To turn women’s personal health challenges into propaganda videos to indoctrinate children is offensive.”
The bill’s sponsor, Senator Janice Bowling, has defended the video as “medically correct.” John Stonestreet and Timothy Padgett of Breakpoint Colson Center have pointed out that another Live Action video depicting abortion procedures “demonstrated that when people are confronted with the truth about what an unborn child is and what abortion actually does, a significant number will abandon (or at least question) their pro-abortion positions.”
“That’s because truth is on life’s side. And that’s reason enough to cheer on the state of Tennessee with this decision. After all, don’t we want our children to learn what is true?”
Long-settled biological criteria and mainstream medical textbooks establish that a living human being, structurally and genetically distinct from his or her mother, is created upon fertilization and is present throughout the entirety of pregnancy – regardless of whether that embryonic human is being artificially sustained outside of the womb.
This is not in serious dispute; in 2019, University of Chicago Department of Comparative Human Development graduate Steve Jacobs found that 96 percent of more than 5,500 biologists he surveyed agreed, despite overwhelmingly identifying as “liberal,” “pro-choice,” and Democrats, and a majority identifying as “non-religious.”
Many abortionists and pro-abortion activists and philosophers admit as much, granting preborn babies’ humanity while either asserting that a mother’s “bodily autonomy” trumps her baby’s rights or making the loaded claim that some humans do not necessarily count as “persons.”
Abortion defenders tend to single out for objection the earliness of the heartbeat, which forms the basis for six-week abortion bans across the country, on the grounds that “electrical impulses” detected at or before six weeks are supposedly not actual heartbeats yet. But mainstream medical textbooks have long affirmed that the heart begins pumping blood as early as three weeks, and electrical activity related to heart functions is still a sign of life, even when the physical structures necessary to receive those signals are not yet fully formed.
LifeSiteNews has previously reported that similar legislation is also being advanced in Iowa and West Virginia; Live Action notes it has also been introduced in Kentucky, Missouri, and Virginia, and enacted in North Dakota.