Last week, The Louisville Courier Journal published an article that is the latest in a string of pro-abortion media attacks against Live Action’s “Baby Olivia” video. “Baby Olivia” depicts life in the womb using ground-breaking animation and medical expertise, but has been wrongly criticized as inaccurate.
Live Action collaborated with medical experts on the creation of “Baby Olivia” using data from the Endowment for Human Development (EHD), a self-described “nonprofit organization dedicated to improving health science education and public health” that is “committed to neutrality regarding all controversial bioethical issues,” the video is being attacked for so-called “medical inaccuracies.”
Kentucky legislators are currently discussing House Bill 346. Sponsored by Rep. Nancy Tate, the bill would not specifically require that schools play “Baby Olivia” for students, but would require that middle and high schools include a presentation of an ultrasound video and computer-generated animations that are at least three minutes long and show the stages of human development in utero. Parents would have to opt their children in — and “Baby Olivia” would satisfy the bill’s requirements.
The Louisville Courier Journal states that “Democratic lawmakers opposed the bill, saying it will misinform Kentucky students.” Oddly enough, one Democratic legislator suggested using a National Geographic video instead of “Baby Olivia,” perhaps unaware that National Geographic distributes a development video created by EHD, the main source used by Live Action to create the “Baby Olivia” video.
The Courier Journal also notes that “[s]cientists and doctors have criticized the video for medical inaccuracies,” yet, the only specified doctor the news outlet quotes is Dr. Daniel Grossman, an abortionist and well-known abortion industry insider.
Quoting an abortionist
The Courier Journal describes Grossman as “a professor of obstetrics, gynecology and reproductive sciences at the University of California, San Francisco…” but fails to state that Grossman is an abortionist and has a previous association with Danco Laboratories, the U.S. manufacturer of the abortion pill. As previously reported by Live Action News contributor Carole Novielli, “According to IBIS Reproductive Health where Grossman is a senior advisor, prior to joining IBIS in 2005, Grossman was a health specialist at the Population Council in Mexico City.” The Population Council was instrumental in bringing RU-486 (mifepristone abortion pill) to the U.S. under the Bill Clinton administration, and reportedly “turned over U.S. rights of the drug to the Population Council of New York, which began the clinical trials needed for FDA approval.” Then, the Population Council “created Danco Laboratories to market” the abortion pill, which the FDA then approved in 2000 in a regimen along with misoprostol.
Novielli noted that Grossman testified in 2014 that he was a consultant to Planned Parenthood Shasta Pacific and served as a liaison member of the Planned Parenthood Federation of America National Medical Committee. In 2010, Grossman received an award from the National Abortion Federation for research evaluating the use of telemedicine to “improve access to abortion in rural settings.”
It should come as no surprise, then, that Grossman is quoted by The Courier Journal as claiming there are “several medical inaccuracies” in the “Baby Olivia” video. However, his arguments are severely lacking and are in direct conflict with scientific facts and medical experts who do not financially or professionally benefit from abortion sales.
Dating a pregnancy
The Courier Journal noted that Grossman takes issue with the method of dating used in the video — which is from the beginning of fertilization, instead of two weeks after a woman’s last menstrual period (LMP). LMP is the dating method used by OB/Gyns to estimate a due date for the baby. However, as stated by MedScape, using LMP or gestational age to date a pregnancy “assumes that conception occurs on day 14 of the cycle. The fallacy in this assumption is that the time of ovulation varies greatly in relation to the menstrual cycle, both from cycle to cycle and individual to individual. Basing GA on the LMP tends to result in an overestimation.”
In other words, it is more accurate to date a human being’s beginning from the moment of his or her fertilization, not from the mother’s estimated period two weeks before. When describing the development of a human being in the womb, the child’s presumed due date is irrelevant and is, frankly, not the point of the “Baby Olivia” video. The point is to accurately inform people of the markers of human development in the womb — the first being fertilization.
Grossman argued that using fertilization “means everything happens two weeks earlier.” But this is untrue. Nothing is ‘happening earlier’ by using fertilization to measure fetal development. This is simply the measuring of fetal development based on the preborn human’s growth and milestones, not on the woman’s recollection of her last menstrual period, which was what doctors used before scientific advancements in ultrasound technology allowed pregnancies to be more accurately dated beginning with studies in the 1960s.
In addition, doctors Max Mongelli, Associate Professor of Obstetrics and Gynecology at the University of Sydney, and Jason O. Gardosi, Professor of Maternal and Perinatal Health at the University of Warwick, wrote in their 2021 medical journal article titled Evaluation of Gestation (emphasis added):
“Gestational age (GA) refers to the length of pregnancy after the first day of the last menstrual period (LMP) and is usually expressed in weeks and days. This is also known as menstrual age. Conceptional age (CA) is the true fetal age and refers to the length of pregnancy from the time of conception.”
Dating pregnancy by conceptual/fertilization age, as done in the “Baby Olivia” video, is the most scientifically and medically accurate method.
The heartbeat
The Courier Journal also defers to Grossman when it discusses the heartbeat of the preborn child. It writes, “Grossman also pointed out other inaccuracies in the video: The video says a heartbeat can be detected as soon as 3 weeks and one day after fertilization.”
It does not say why Grossman thinks it’s inaccurate or show proof that it is inaccurate, and that’s likely because there is no proof.
EHD notes from one study, “[J] Wisser and [P] Dirschedl reported using transvaginal ultrasound to visualize the embryonic heartbeat 23 days postfertilization in two embryos fertilized in vitro ‘with exactly known … age’ and ‘in embryos from 2 mm of greatest length onwards.'”
Videos of ultrasounds between five and six weeks LMP (three and four weeks post-fertilization) also show that the heartbeat is detectable at this very young age.
In fact, the human heart is the first organ to develop, according to multiple doctors — including Dr. Mobeen Syed. Syed explained, “[The] heart is the very first organ that starts developing and it is the first organ that reaches a functional state. Can you imagine that the heart reaches a functional state even before its own development completes? When the heart is in the form of a tube, even then it is pulsating and it is beating and it is pumping blood.” (emphasis added)
In addition, Peter J. Ward, Professor of Anatomy, explained, “The heart, to do its job, has to be able to pump, and it starts pumping fairly early on — about day 23 of development. … At this point, we’ve got a nice flow of blood already set up through the heart.” (emphasis added)
What about the woman?
The third medical inaccuracy Grossman supposedly found in the “Baby Olivia” video is that it doesn’t talk about the pregnant woman. “There is very little mention of the woman in whose body the embryo is developing, including how she may feel about the pregnancy and how it may be affecting her health,” he said.
How a woman ‘feels’ about being pregnant has no relation to her child’s development scientifically or medically speaking. Her child’s developmental stages do not change based on her feelings.
When it comes to her health, if she develops a condition that affects her baby’s development, doctors can make efforts to treat the condition or help support her body and her baby’s body for as long as possible so that the baby can continue to grow in the womb. If the pregnancy must end to protect the life of the mother, the life of the baby, or both, then the baby can be delivered prematurely and doctors can work to save both lives.
National Geographic distributes EHD video
Beyond Grossman’s biased comments, The Courier Journal also noted that Democrats in the state legislature oppose the bill. Rep. Josie Raymond told The Courier Journal that she would be comfortable with other fetal development videos being shown that — as The Courier Journal summed up — are “more accurate than the Baby Olivia video, such as a video from National Geographic.”
However, National Geographic is the distributor of EHD’s The Biology of Prenatal Development, an award-winning science documentary. You’ll remember that EHD is the source behind “Baby Olivia.” The Biology of Prenatal Development is recommended for use in middle and high school health and biology classes as well as college- and graduate-level human embryology courses, and prenatal care classes. National Geographic, which Raymond claims to be more accurate than Live Action, promotes the same human development information used by Live Action in the “Baby Olivia” video that she opposes.
Further opposition
The Courier Journal also reported that Tamarra Wieder opposes “Baby Olivia” being shown in schools. She is the state director of the Kentucky Planned Parenthood, which makes her criticism of “Baby Olivia” also obviously biased.
Regardless of the pro-abortion opposition, a similar bill was enacted in North Dakota last year and two other states — Iowa and Missouri — are currently considering similar legislation. Kentucky’s bill has already passed a House committee, which voted along party lines to approve it. It now heads to the full House for approval, though House Democrats have filled at least seven floor amendments to remove the provision that seeks to call the proposed law “the Baby Olivia Act” and to remove the requirement that the video be “medically accurate” — indicating their true motives. Those amendments are not expected to be approved.
