In an op-ed for USA Today, elections columnist Sara Pequeño admits the real reason that abortion advocates are fighting so hard to stop a prenatal development video from being shown to students in schools.
It isn’t the video’s so-called ‘inaccuracy,’ even though they repeatedly claim it will “mislead” people because it tracks the baby’s development from fertilization instead of from the mother’s last menstrual period (an estimated two weeks before the baby’s existence). The specific issue they take with Live Action’s “Meet Baby Olivia” video is that by sharing a realistic look at the development of preborn children in the womb, it might make women and teenage girls “feel guilty” about (or “stigmatize”) having an abortion and, therefore, not have an abortion when faced with an unplanned pregnancy.
The problem, by their own admission, is that they fear more babies will live.
Abortion guilt
Pequeño writes about the “Baby Olivia”-related bill that recently passed both the Tennessee House and Senate and which does not require that the “Meet Baby Olivia” video be specifically shown; instead, it requires a “high-quality, computer generated animation” or “high-definition” ultrasound to be shown. Still, Pequeño writes, “The Baby Olivia Act is just another attack on abortion access meant to further stigmatize the procedure and the patients who choose it while doing nothing to help spread useful information or actually help families.”
She continues, “It might feel like just another piece of disinformation, but the video is designed in a way to make teenagers feel guilty for something they should not feel guilty about.”
In other words, Pequeño believes that knowing the truth will cause women to “feel guilty” about abortion — not empowered — and therefore, it’s better that they not be informed about human prenatal development.
It’s the same reason abortion advocates and abortion businesses fight to block ultrasounds and other informed consent measures prior to abortions, and why abortion workers have been known to turn the ultrasound screen away from women during abortions— they don’t want them to see their preborn children. They want women to remain in the dark, believing that their babies are ‘clumps of cells.’
A poll by the pro-life organization Focus on the Family found that when women who were undecided about whether to end a pregnancy were shown an ultrasound, 78% did not have an abortion.
Baby Olivia is scientifically accurate, and they know it
In an attempt to disparage “Baby Olivia,” pro-abortion groups and media outlets have been attacking the video, claiming that it is nothing but biased misinformation and political propaganda. But the video provides a scientifically accurate depiction of prenatal development. 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.” EHD’s own DVD of prenatal development — using the very same facts and developmental markers — is distributed by National Geographic.
The best argument of inaccuracy “Baby Olivia’s” opponents, like Pequeño, could come up with is that it uses the moment of fertilization rather than LMP (a woman’s last menstrual period) to measure the development of the preborn child. The video is clear that it dates prenatal development from fertilization onward, and therefore, it does not mislead the viewer.
Pequeño writes, “Medical experts say the video’s timeline is about two weeks earlier than what doctors agree on. It’s also inaccurate in the way it depicts the range of movement for a fetus, showing Olivia moving much more than the average fetus would during the early stages of development.” Anyone who has seen their baby bouncing around on an ultrasound screen in the first trimester at 10-11 weeks LMP (8-9 weeks post-fertilization) knows how early and how much preborn babies move at this age.
As for the “medical experts” who call the timeline “two weeks earlier than what doctors agree on,” Baby Olivia shows the more accurate depiction of the timing of prenatal development, which is what the video is presenting when it shows human development beginning at fertilization. Using a woman’s LMP to determine when fertilization occurred and how old a preborn child is represents an estimation. As stated by MedScape, using LMP or gestational age (GA) 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.”
When describing the development of a human being in the womb, the child’s presumed due date is irrelevant and is 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 of which is fertilization.
Pequeño and other abortion advocates see “Baby Olivia” as a threat to abortion and are afraid that more girls may choose life for their babies. She writes, “… the ‘Baby Olivia’ video’s purpose is to dissuade viewers from choosing an option that is already heavily stigmatized. That will only hurt students.”
Pequeño’s version of female empowerment appears to exclude informed consent, education, and motherhood if at a “less than ideal” time. Her solution to preventing the “hurt” of teen motherhood is to withhold information about prenatal development so women and girls don’t learn about the life of their baby in the womb or understand what abortion does to that baby… until it’s too late.
