North Dakota House OKs bill mandating fetal development video for students

BISMARCK — College districts’ life science curriculum must embody a video of fetal improvement underneath a invoice the North Dakota Home of Representatives handed Monday.

The Home in a 60-34 vote handed Home Invoice 1265, introduced by Rep. Karen Anderson, R-Grafton. The invoice now goes to the Senate.

The invoice would add “a high-definition ultrasound video, at the least three minutes in period, exhibiting the event of the mind, coronary heart, intercourse organs, and different very important organs in early fetal improvement” to a college district’s human development and improvement dialogue and human sexuality instruction. The invoice does not specify a grade degree.

Sen. Janne Myrdal, R-Edinburg, introduced a pattern video to the Home Human Providers Committee earlier this month. The video of “Child Olivia” is from Reside Motion, an anti-abortion group.

“That is the second that life begins,” a narrator says as a sperm cell enters an ovum within the video. “A brand new human being has come into existence.”

When human life begins is a serious level of debate relating to abortion.

Myrdal stated Reside Motion is keen to relinquish its rights to the video, take its title off, and supply it freed from cost to the state Division of Public Instruction. DPI spokesman Dale Wetzel stated the company did not testify on the invoice; he did not touch upon the video.

Myrdal stated she selected the video not for its supply however for its content material being “the shortest … most scientific that I’ve seen, of high quality.”

Myrdal, one of many Legislature’s most outspoken abortion opponents, stated “the supply does not matter on this occasion, I believe.”

“If that turns into controversial … it could be media making it controversial or the abortion business making it controversial due to the supply of the video,” she informed the Tribune.

She wonders what different supply “could be acceptable? Deliberate Parenthood?”

Deliberate Parenthood is a reproductive well being care supplier that advocates for abortion rights.

Rep. David Richter, R-Williston, opposed the invoice for setting educational requirements exterior of DPI guidelines and college boards.

Rep. LaurieBeth Hager, D-Fargo, opposed the invoice for not being reviewed by the Home Training Committee.