Students would have to watch a fetal development video created by an anti-abortion group under TN Senate bill

Sen. Janice Bowling, R-Tullahoma, wants kids to learn about early fetal development from a video depiction. The bill she’s sponsoring is headed to the Senate floor. It’d require that schools add a video like “Meet Baby Olivia” to their family life curriculum.

More: Tennessee Bill Regulating Family Planning Curriculum Heads to the Governor

“This is the moment that life begins,” the narrator says, as an animated sperm meets an egg. “A new human being has come into existence.”

Sen. Raumesh Akbari, D-Memphis, thinks that the move is political.

“It is developed by an organization that is pro-life. Specifically, that organization is dedicated to that initiative or movement,” Akbari said. “So it seems we are placing a political organizations video into our code.”

The organization that produced the three-minute film is Live Action. The group has been restricted and banned from posting on social media platforms including Twitter, TikTok and Pinterest. The latter banned the group in 2019 for spreading what it deemed harmful information.

Apart from the politicization, Ashley Coffield, CEO of Planned Parenthood of Tennessee and North Mississippi, also questions the content.

“The video depicts fetal development in an inaccurate and emotionally manipulative way,” Coffield said. “It has not been endorsed by any leading unbiased medical organization.”

However, Bowling feels it’s necessary for students to get a full picture of how human life is created.

“A family life curriculum that directly or indirectly addresses human growth, human development, human sexuality would be incomplete if it didn’t actually show the very beginning of that life, which is at conception,” Bowling said.

Akbari thinks if anything is added to the state’s family life curriculum, it should be focused on things that will help with what students are facing.

“I think if we are going to take three minutes to do something within family life curriculum, especially when talking about our older students, then we should spend some time on something besides abstinence,” Akbari said. “Maybe that would address some of the extreme pregnancy rates from rural, urban and suburban, and also the extreme rates of STDs.”

The latest data from the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention show that Tennessee’s teen pregnancy rate is the seventh-highest in the nation. Bowling was the author of the 2021 law that reinforced the state’s laws promoting abstinence in family planning education.

The bill passed its last committee stop and is headed to the Senate Floor next week. If passed, it’ll head to Gov. Bill Lee for his signature.