Florida schools could be required to show students detailed videos of human fetal development under legislation filed this week that mirrors laws backed by an anti-abortion group and adopted in recent years in North Dakota and Tennessee.
Rep. Dana Trabulsy, R-Fort Pierce, who chairs the Florida House education committee, filed HB 1255 late Wednesday afternoon. The multi-pronged education bill includes a requirement to show students in grades 6 through 12 a “high-definition ultrasound video, at least one minute in duration” and a three-minute computer-generated video “showing and describing the process of fertilization and various stages of human development inside the uterus.”
North Dakota and Tennessee passed similar laws requiring schools to show a fetal-development video by Live Action, an anti-abortion group. The video, entitled “Baby Olivia,” was described in the other states’ legislation with language that echoes that in HB 1255.
“If young people see the beauty of these beginnings, then hopefully they’ll think twice before running to the abortion clinic,” said Sen. Janne Myrdal, a North Dakota Republican who helped introduce that state’s bill, in an interview with The Associated Press in 2023.
Live Action gained notoriety in the late 2000s for making secret recordings at abortion clinics and posting its “investigations” to social media, where the organization has now amassed millions of followers across several platforms. The organization has called for outlawing abortions.
Trabulsy did not immediately respond to a request for comment Thursday morning.
Rep. Anna Eskamani, D-Orlando, said the provision regarding the video was “anti-abortion propaganda” being snuck into sweeping education legislation.
“It’s just sick,” she said.
Eskamani said Florida is missing the mark on sex education in public schools and heading further in the wrong direction with Trabulsy’s bill.
“This video is not scientific. It is from an anti abortion organization,” Eskamani said. “This is clearly an attempt to continue to push an anti-abortion agenda onto our children — where I thought the legislature didn’t want to indoctrinate kids.”
Citing a new state law, Florida education officials last year told school districts they could not teach students about contraception or other sex-related topics and must “emphasize abstinence” in any sex education lessons.
A bill similar to Trabulsy’s failed in Arkansas — like Florida, a GOP-run state — this week when the “Baby Olivia Act” failed to get enough votes in committee, according to the Arkansas Advocate.
The Florida Legislature, which starts its new session Tuesday, is dominated by Republicans who enacted a strict six-week ban that, with some exceptions, limits most abortions.
But some lawmakers could vote against the bill, Eskamani said, if “voters hold them accountable.” In November, 57% of Floridians voted to protect abortion rights until viability, or about 24 weeks of pregnancy. Amendment 4, however, needed 60% of the vote to become law, and so failed to pass.
“Pushing anti-abortion propaganda onto our children is not something that the people of this state want to see,” she said.
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