It’s the law: Idaho public schools will now teach prenatal development

Pro-lifers notched another victory last week when Idaho passed a bill requiring public schools to teach students about the development of human life from conception to birth.

Starting in the 2025-26 school year, all public and charter schools must instruct students in grades 5 through 12 about prenatal development.

The law requires a video of an ultrasound, as well as a high-quality animation depicting development from fertilization, while highlighting “significant markers in cell growth and organ development for every week of pregnancy until birth.”

The measure breezed through the Idaho Senate (27-8) and the House (63-6), before being signed by Gov. Brad Little on March 26. 

Bill sponsor Rep. Heather Scott, R-Blanchard, praised the new law, saying, “I am so proud of Idaho legislators and look forward to fostering a culture of life in our children.”

Scott had previously said her niece was taught in school that unborn babies were “nothing more than a clump of cells.”

Lila Rose, a prominent pro-lifer and founder of the advocacy group Live Action, expressed hope that more states will soon follow Idaho’s example.

“This is a significant step toward equipping Idaho’s students with accurate, necessary, and scientifically accurate information regarding human life in the womb,” Rose said in a press release.

“With North Dakota, Tennessee, and now Idaho leading the way, we urge the remaining 47 states to follow their bold example. Every American student deserves access to the truth about when life begins and how it develops.”

Live Action has already produced child-friendly animations like those now required in Idaho. The animations depict “Baby Olivia,” now the inspiration for the names of various bills promoting the instruction of prenatal development in schools. 

But not everyone is thrilled with the new law.

In a press release, Planned Parenthood complained the state was endorsing “ideologically driven manipulation.”

“With the stroke of a pen, [the governor] has endorsed the spread of medically inaccurate, ideologically driven propaganda in Idaho classrooms,” the statement read. “This is not education – it’s manipulation, and Idaho’s students deserve far better.”

It also disagreed that life begins at conception.

However, Baby Oliva has been accredited by numerous medical doctors, including the executive director of the American College of Pediatrics, which published an article in 2017 stating human life does in fact begin at conception.

“The predominance of human biological research confirms that human life begins at conception – fertilization,” it reads. “At fertilization, the human being emerges as a whole, genetically distinct, individuated zygotic living human organism, a member of the species Homo sapiens, needing only the proper environment in order to grow and develop.”

Despite attempts by the American College of Obstetricians and Gynecologists in the 1960s to redefine conception as implantation rather than fertilization, the consensus remains that a unique being is created “when an ovum is fertilized by a sperm.” 

And that baby’s development “does not end at birth but extends into early adulthood.”