By Susan Ciancio
Why are pro-abortion advocates so afraid of science when it comes to the developing preborn baby? They don’t want people to understand the truth—that a preborn baby is a human being.
Yet, unlike some who today believe that everyone has their own version of the truth and that truth is fluid, we know that the truth behind a growing preborn baby does not change. The science of embryology teaches that a new human being—with his own DNA—is created the moment the sperm fertilizes the egg.
It’s as simple as that. And this is a concept that all children—indeed, all people—should know and understand.
To help facilitate this, legislators have introduced bills in Iowa, Missouri, Kentucky, and West Virginia to give students in public schools a glimpse into the life of a preborn baby. They want to make it mandatory for schools to show fetal development videos like the Baby Olivia video created by Live Action. This three-minute video explores a baby’s growth and development from the time she is first created.
While controversy has raged over how the Baby Olivia video counts the weeks of a woman’s pregnancy, those who are stirring anger over this are missing the point. Children should be taught about human development. They are humans after all; they should know how they were created and how they grow.
Pro-choice OBGYNs have claimed that the video is “designed to manipulate the emotions of viewers” and that the video is the “last thing kids need to be watching.”
But they are wrong. Kids need to know the truth about how a baby grows and develops. And quite frankly, I can think of a lot of more pertinent things that would fall into the category of the “last thing kids need to be watching,” starting with school-sponsored drag shows, sex ed presentations by Planned Parenthood, inane TikTok videos, and more.
A baby’s development in her mother’s body is not something to fear. Nor is it something to deny. It is a wondrous event to celebrate!
That’s why the Culture of Life Studies Program has created two lessons about the development of the human being.
The first is for students in middle school and older. Entitled The Beauty of the Developing Human Being, this lesson explores the science of the earliest moments of a person’s life and gives students a firm foundation regarding the fact that every human being’s life must be protected from creation until death.
The second is entitled The Developing Baby and is for kids in pre-k to 2nd grade. This lesson instills an understanding of the basic milestones of human development from a person’s first moment of creation, reinforces the fact that life is a miracle to be treasured, and discusses the mother/child bond.
At CLSP, we believe in the importance of teaching kids the truth about human development. As parents, grandparents, teachers, or anyone who cares about kids, it is our responsibility to teach this truth.
The world is a dangerous place, not just physically but spiritually. We are in a constant battle for the souls of our children. The devil and his minions hide in so many places that we can’t always see them. Sometimes they even look incredibly innocent and even inviting.
Because our children will encounter people and situations like this their entire lives, we must arm them with the tools they need to stand up and tell the truth. This requires not only moral courage but knowledge—the knowledge they get from pro-life videos, pro-life lessons, CCE classrooms, the wisdom of the Catholic Church, and other faithful materials.
To ignore these facts, to stay silent about them, or to outright deny them is wrong, and it’s setting our kids up for a lifetime of confusion.
It is no guarantee that our children will remain faithful to Church teaching even if we try our best to do “everything right,” but if we give up in frustration, if we let social media parent our children, if we provide more screen time than parent time with our children, and if we never talk about our faith, we are barely giving them a fighting chance. Our children deserve better than this. Our children deserve the truth.
