After much discussion, the Arkansas House passed a bill Thursday that would require public schools to show students a fetal development video that has been criticized as agenda-driven and medically inaccurate.
House Bill 1180, the Baby Olivia Act, passed with 70 votes for it, all from Republicans. The bill would require each public school district and open-enrollment public charter school to incorporate a human growth and development discussion into existing health and safety courses from fifth grade onward.
The discussion would have to include a high-definition ultrasound video and the three-minute “Meet Baby Olivia” video developed by anti-abortion group Live Action that depicts fertilization and stages of in-utero development of a computer-generated fetus.
HB 1180 passed the House Education Committee on Tuesday in a split vote after members of both the public and the committee voiced concerns about the age-appropriateness and potential medical inaccuracies of the video.
Democratic Reps. Steve Magie of Conway and Ashley Hudson of Little Rock expressed similar concerns Thursday on the House floor. Eighteen of the 19 House Democrats voted against the bill. Rep. Ken Ferguson, D-Pine Bluff, and 11 Republicans did not vote.
Magie said he approved of showing students a fetal development video but said fifth grade is too early for this instruction. As a physician, he also objected to the video measuring the length of a pregnancy from fertilization, while OBGYNs measure fetal development based on a person’s last menstrual cycle.
Bill sponsor and former nurse Rep. Mary Bentley, R-Perryville, repeatedly said the video is medically accurate and endorsed by obstetrician-gynecologists who oppose abortion. She also said Live Action allows schools to use the Baby Olivia video at no cost.
The American College of Obstetricians and Gynecologists (ACOG) told CNN last year that the video is designed to manipulate viewers’ emotions instead of sharing “evidence-based, scientific information about embryonic and fetal development.”
Bentley said she disagreed with ACOG’s assessment, mostly because the OBGYN membership organization considers abortion necessary and life-saving medical care. She also said fifth grade is an appropriate time for children to learn about fetal development because many girls start their menstrual cycle around nine years old.
“Kids are seeing so much already on their phones and they’re hearing stuff in the bathroom,” Bentley said. “I want them to see some truth and know what’s happening so they can have honest discussions.”
Hudson and Magie both said parents should be able to sign their kids up for fetal development instruction rather than be expected to opt out of a classroom requirement.
HB 1180 does not contain specific language about opting out of watching the video, but Bentley said parents will have the option of exempting their child from the lesson. Current policy allows parents to exempt their children from a sex education discussion.
State law says that schools teaching sex education “shall include instruction in sexual abstinence, and no funds shall be utilized for abortion referral.” Magie took issue with HB 1180 mandating instruction about pregnancy while the law makes sex education optional in general and not all Arkansas school districts have sex education curricula.
North Dakota and Tennessee have approved bills similar to HB 1180, while legislation is under consideration in other states like Iowa and Oklahoma.
However, a similar bill in West Virginia passed the state Senate but stalled in the House due to concerns its religious angle would violate the First Amendment and lead to lawsuits, Hudson said, adding that she agreed.
“I remember [us] sitting in this chamber last session and talking a lot about propaganda in schools and how parents should have a choice on the type of information that their kids consume, what they hear from their teachers, the curriculum that we are teaching them,” Hudson said, referring to the LEARNS Act of 2023 creating a school choice program and banning “indoctrination” in classrooms.
“The reason I know this is propaganda,” Hudson continued, “is in the bill, because we can’t use any other video… There are hundreds of videos by nonpartisan organizations that we can access and tell our teachers, ‘Hey, show them this, show them this video, let them see the wonder of fertilization all the way through to birth.’ But let’s do it in a way that isn’t clearly volatile and isn’t clearly meant to promote a certain agenda.”
Republican Reps. Ryan Rose of Van Buren and Cindy Crawford of Fort Smith spoke in favor of the bill.
“All this would do is let children know that [a fetus] really is a human life and that abortion really is murder,” Crawford said.
Before the vote to pass HB 1180, Magie made a motion to refer the bill back to the House Education Committee for more discussion and potential amendments. The motion failed with 21 votes for it and 58 against it.
The Senate Education Committee will be next to consider the bill.
This article was originally published by the Arkansas Advocate.
