This story is syndicated from The Talon, the newspaper of Ankeny High School in Ankeny, IA. The original version ran here.
Iowa lawmakers passed a bill this month that updates grade 5–12 curricula to include computer-generated animations of fetal development that “depict the humanity and the unborn child.” The bill also bans the school use of materials from any entity affiliated with abortions.
Gov. Kim Reynolds (R) signed the bill into law on May 19. Marking the latest state victory in a nationwide Republican campaign, Iowa is now the third state to enact such a law.
Bills in North Dakota and Tennessee, each passing similar legislation in 2024, specified by name the use of an AI-generated video from anti-abortion and pro-life organization Live Action called “Meet Baby Olivia.” The video features vital organs in various stages of development. Critics allege it falsely portrays early stages of pregnancy as taking human form.
The American College of Obstetricians and Gynecologists released an official statement in 2024 criticizing the video as “designed to manipulate the emotions of viewers rather than to share evidence-based, scientific information about embryonic and fetal development.”
The Iowa bill formally removed the American College of Obstetricians and Gynecologists as a reliable source for instruction.
In Republican-led Arkansas, where similar legislation may pass this year, state Senator Ashley Hudson (D) compared the Arkansas law to the bans on teaching evolution.
“We cannot mandate political speech in our classrooms just because it’s something the majority of this body believes politically or religiously,” Hudson said.
Democrats have largely remained united in the fight over abortion-related state bills since the overturning of Roe v. Wade. Iowa State Senator Sarah Trone Garriot (D) said the source of the video matters.
“Originally, the bill was proposed, for a very specific classroom resource. There was a group that created this AI animation version of what’s happening in the womb,” she said. “It wasn’t entirely accurate scientifically, and it was also very much created to create an emotional response. So it wasn’t really about teaching students the phases of human development. It was about trying to persuade them specifically towards a kind of anti-abortion [agenda].”
Republican legislators hope that the bill will alter students’ understanding of prenatal development.
“We wanted to emphasize the idea that human growth and development actually starts before birth,” said Republican Iowa Senator and chair of the education committee Jeff Taylor. “There’s a roughly nine-month period before birth where you’re seeing growth and development of human beings.”
However, Iowa senators stopped short of specifying which video teachers must use, instead only mandating a humanized update.
“On the Senate side, both last year and this year, we deleted a reference to a video called ‘Meet Baby Olivia,’” Taylor said. “I thought that was too specific, and so we kept the House language specifying what we wanted to see in the instruction of the students, but we deleted that specific video.”
The bill currently states that instruction must include, “a high-quality, computer-generated rendering or animation, or an ultrasound or other real image, that depicts the humanity of the unborn child by showing prenatal human development, starting at fertilization, noting significant markers in cell growth and organ development throughout every stage of pregnancy.”
In defense of the AI models, Taylor explained that while medical technology has progressed, there are still some areas where technology is lacking. He sees a particular use for AI or computer imagery in filling in gaps that cannot be covered by traditional prenatal screening technologies.
“I think at the very earliest stages of development, like when you know an unborn baby is a zygote, or maybe even an embryo during those first few weeks or the first trimester, it may be that we don’t have the technology available that would allow for an up close, live image of the development,” Taylor said. “So some of that might have to be [shown] using AI or some other, computer-generated image. But later on, as you get through the gestation trimesters, an ultrasound is available. It’s always better to have the real thing versus the computer-generated if it’s available.”
Trone Garriot believes the legislation stems from a desire on behalf of Republican legislators to emotionally influence students.
“It really wasn’t so much about educating children, Trone Garriot said. “It’s about persuading them of a specific perspective and opinion.”
The bill is inconsistent in its use of various terms to describe prenatal humans. Though educational materials generally use the scientific terms of “zygote” and “embryo” to define these entities, the bill more often refers to them as “unborn children.”
“I think the reason that Republicans like that language is we want to emphasize that this is a human being, even if it’s tiny,” Taylor said. “We all start very small, but we’re all human from the very beginning.”
In the push against groups seen as pro-abortion, Iowa Republicans removed from the recommended sources listed in the bill accredited groups like the American College of Obstetricians and Gynecologists, the American Public Health Association, the American Academy of Pediatrics, and the National Association of School Nurses.
Taylor, however, does not believe that this change will affect the accuracy of information students will receive.
“I don’t think it changes anything, because it keeps the important language, saying that it has to be supported by the way of research conducted in compliance with accepted scientific methods recognized as medically accurate and objective by leading professional organizations and agencies with relevant expertise,” Taylor said.
The lack of specificity in some sections of the bill has left Democrats optimistic.
“I think that right now, the bill is open enough that there is room for educators to be able to do what they need to, but some of those decisions will come down to the school district,” Trone Garriot said. “So folks who are concerned about it, talk to school boards and ask, ‘how is this going to be implemented,’ and then express concerns to the administrators, to the superintendent, because it’s still very possible to use scientifically accurate materials.”
While still factoring in accuracy, Senator Taylor believes that focusing on humanity at the beginning will carry over a respect for humanity later on.
“I’m hoping that a side effect of this will be that it’ll increase a respect for human life, no matter who we are, no matter what we look like, or any of those other things that divide us later on,” Taylor said.