Ohio House passes bill requiring public schools show ‘Baby Olivia’ video to students in grades 5-12
The Ohio House passed a bill that would require Ohio public schools to show a video produced by an anti-abortion group about fetal development to students during a recent House session.
Ohio House Bill 485, also known as the “Enact Baby Olivia Act,” would require schools to show either the ‘Baby Olivia’ video or a similar video to students every year starting in fifth grade all the way up through twelfth grade beginning with the 2026-27 school year.
The bill, which now heads to the Ohio Senate, would also require showing students an ultrasound video at least three minutes long.
All Ohio House Democrats present at the session voted against the bill.
Ohio State Rep. Melanie Miller, R–Ashland, introduced the bill less than two months ago.
There is an opt-out portion of the bill allowing parents to request in writing that their child be excused from watching the video.
“This legislation strengthens science education in Ohio’s public schools by giving students a clear, age appropriate and factual understanding of early human development,” Miller claimed.
“The development of human life is truly beautiful. It is science. It is complex. It’s intricate, and it’s worthy of being taught.”
The three-minute “Meet Baby Olivia” video was produced by Live Action, which advocates against abortion, and it shows fertilization and fetal growth.
Planned Parenthood calls the “Baby Olivia” video “inaccurate, misleading, and manipulative.”
Planned Parenthood notes that the video counts the embryo’s age from conception, which doctors do not do; claims a fetal heartbeat can be detected at six weeks despite there not being a heart formed and this sound is actually an electrical flutter where the heart will later form; and inaccurately displays the look of the embryo, mischaracterizes its activity, and leaves out critical information about at what point it can survive outside the womb.
The American College of Obstetricians and Gynecologists has issues with the bill, saying the video shows gestational age two weeks earlier than starts and shows fetal development as more advanced than it is.
A medical student and a doctor questioned the scientific accuracy of the Baby Olivia video during testimony.
Ohio State Rep. Beryl Brown Piccolantonio, D-Gahanna, proposed an amendment that would have restricted showing the video only to high school students, but it was not added to the bill.
“It will limit it to grades 9-12, so that our students would at least have the ability and maturity to properly contextualize watching a video that was created by CGI and that is not medically accurate,” she said.
Ohio Right to Life celebrated the House passing the bill.
“Showing students how a baby grows in the womb isn’t and shouldn’t be controversial,” Ohio Right to Life Executive Director Carrie Snyder said. “It’s simply science.”
Planned Parenthood Advocates of Ohio condemned the Ohio House for passing Ohio H.B. 485.
“H.B. 485 does nothing to address Ohio’s high teen birth rate and STI rates, and instead forces school children to watch false medical information about sex education that is inappropriate at any age or grade, especially for elementary students,” Planned Parenthood Advocates of Ohio Executive Director Lauren Blauvelt said.
Ohio is one of a handful of states without comprehensive sex education standards taught in schools.
Ohio’s curriculum stresses abstinence as a general policy and requires some instruction about sexually transmitted infections, according to the Ohio Revised Code.
“I think the first step is establishing what through science we want to make sure we’re teaching our children,” state Rep. Phil Robinson, D-Solon, said.
Similar bills have been introduced in more than 20 other states so far this session and Idaho, Kansas, North Dakota, Tennessee, Iowa, and Indiana have enacted similar bills into law.
Abortion is legal in Ohio up until fetal viability as determined by a patient’s physician. Ohio voters passed an amendment to the Ohio Constitution in 2023 that added protections to abortion care and reproductive rights to the state’s constitution.
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