A new article from the Washington Post is attacking new legislation introduced in various states, attempting to ensure that students have access to videos showing accurate fetal development. This article joins an earlier critique released by the Associated Press.
Iowa has become the latest state, joining North Dakota and West Virginia, to advance legislation requiring videos like Live Action’s “Baby Olivia” to be shown to middle school and high school students. “Baby Olivia” uses realistic, groundbreaking animation to depict medically-accurate information about life in the womb, from the moment of fertilization through birth, and includes significant points in the preborn child’s growth and development for every week of pregnancy.
The Washington Post begins by referring to the videos as showing “a fetus that Live Action named Olivia progressing in utero from a fertilized egg to a fetus near birth” (emphasis added). The repetitive phrasing is likely intentional and meant to avoid using the term baby or child in an attempt to obscure the fact that preborn children are members of the human family. Yet “fetus” is merely a descriptive term for a period of human development – the same as “embryo,” “newborn,” “toddler,” or “teenager.” Once a human egg is fertilized, it is properly referred to as a zygote.
The article continues deriding the video:
The video makes assertions that medical experts challenge. It starts by saying that a “new human being has come into existence” at the moment of fertilization — which some medical experts and abortion rights advocates contested is religious ideology — and that three weeks and one day later, a heartbeat can be detected. It goes on to say that 11 weeks after fertilization, “Olivia” is “playing” and “exploring her environment,” and that 20 weeks after fertilization, some babies have survived outside the womb.
Noting that a new human being has come into existence is hardly “religious ideology.” It’s an assertion based in scientific fact; nearly 10 years ago, scientists were even able to determine the moment life begins – with a zinc spark that occurs when sperm fertilizes the egg. At that time, the preborn baby has his or her own individual, unique DNA, with countless genetic traits – like sex, race, hair color, eye color, and more – already determined, completely distinct from his or her mother and father.
A preborn child’s heart begins beating three weeks after fertilization. Despite being phrased by the abortion industry as a meaningless electrical impulse, the heart, despite not yet having four chambers, is actually pumping blood throughout the baby’s tiny body. By 11 weeks, preborn babies are, indeed, exploring their environments; they can stretch, somersault, roll, and even respond to touch. It is also factual that premature children, thanks to advances in medicine, are able to survive outside the womb at younger and younger ages – including as young as 21 weeks.
Given this, it’s hard to fathom which of these facts are “challenged” by so-called “medical experts.”
Of course, the Washington Post made sure to find its own supposed experts, including Louise King, who is listed only as “OB/GYN and director of reproductive bioethics at Harvard Medical School’s Center for Bioethics.” The Washington Post does not bother to mention that King is an abortionist herself. Another doctor they cited, Michael Belmonte, is a member of Physicians for Reproductive Rights, though the Washington Post named him only as “an OB/GYN and fellow at the American College of Obstetricians and Gynecologists.” Other abortion activists, including pro-abortion politicians, called “Baby Olivia” nothing but “propaganda” — an interesting claim, considering how often the abortion industry has been caught peddling misinformation and lies.
Given the media’s strident objections to “Baby Olivia” in schools, one has to wonder what all the fuss is about, given that human development is basic biological fact. At the same time, the media never seems to object to Planned Parenthood’s brand of sex education in schools, which tells children killing preborn human beings is ‘reproductive freedom.’ It is, after all, easier to kill what you can’t see. Baby Olivia puts the reality of the child in the womb in living color — and an industry that depends on society’s ignorance about abortion (with the help of a complicit media) is well aware of this.
