State law requiring prenatal instruction videos is intended to indoctrinate, not educate

South Dakota House Bill 1313 is a coyote in sheep’s clothing.

The legislation requires public schools to show students “age-appropriate and research-based” videos about prenatal development.

But it gives off an odor of mendacity, of deceit.

In the movie version of Tennessee Williams’ iconic 1955 play about a dysfunctional mid-century Southern planter family, “Cat on a Hot Tin Roof,” patriarch Big Daddy tries to school his eldest son, Brick, on the underhanded, deceitful realities of the world and his own family:

“What’s that smell in this room? Didn’t you notice it, Brick? Didn’t you notice a powerful and obnoxious odor of mendacity in this room? There ain’t nothin’ more powerful than the odor of mendacity.”

State board approves options for prenatal videos in schools, including one from anti-abortion group

There’s a whiff of that in HB 1313, which the South Dakota House overwhelmingly passed, 52-10, on Feb. 12, the Senate approved by an equally lopsided margin, 31-3, on March 3, and Gov. Larry Rhoden signed on March 20. The law took effect July 1, after the state Board of Education Standards on June 23 approved, 7-0, two 3-minute videos and one 42-minute film that comply with the law: “Baby Olivia,” produced by the anti-abortion group Live Action; “How a Human Embryo Develops into a Fetus” by Encyclopedia Britannica; and “The Biology of Prenatal Development” by nonprofit, nonpartisan The Endowment for Human Development.

Tellingly, the law prohibits videos developed by abortion-rights groups. This implicitly reveals that the Legislature deliberately chose not to teach the state’s elementary and secondary school children the whole story of human reproduction, including its sexual precedents and real-world consequences. Sex-ed is not mandated in South Dakota.

After the state Board of Education’s action, Gov. Rhoden emphasized “Human life is sacred, and our students deserve to learn what human life looks like even before a baby is born. … By educating our students on the dignity of human life, we will continue to protect the unborn for generations to come.”

Yet, opponents of the law voiced concern about the accuracy of computer-generated imagery (CGI) used in the videos.

Samantha Chapman of the American Civil Liberties Union (ACLU) said that “the depiction in the videos and the medical community’s standards are misaligned.”

“[The videos include] CGI imagery that grossly misrepresents the sizes and different developmental stages during pregnancy and gestation. They are not medically accurate; they use terminology that is not medically accurate, and they use a different system for dating the pregnancy than what you know obstetricians and gynecologists will use when you are pregnant, and you go see your doctor,” Chapman said. “They are now, instead, getting ideologically driven propaganda.”

Although the law purports to better educate students on human gestation, it actually — this is the mendacious part — appears to be purposely hiding from students the full context of human behavior and moral calculation surrounding that natural, physical process. That means there’s nothing in the videos on the broad diversity of human sexuality (homosexuality, transsexuality, etc.), on sex itself (also “prenatal”), which leads to fertilization, to the many significant and often dangerous complications of pregnancy, and to the often compelling, defensible reasons women choose to end their pregnancies with abortions. These include severe birth defects, risk to the mother, lack of resources to raise a child once born, and practical difficulties of adoption.

This adult squeamishness concerning sexuality characterizes South Dakota in recent years. Although a 1996 dissertation by Aleene Golis at South Dakota State University — “Adult Attitudes Regarding Sex Education in South Dakota Schools” — found that 88.8% of the respondents in her study supported sex education in schools, the state in 2026 still does not mandate it, leaving it up to individual districts to decide.

The prenatal development videos now required in state schools do not teach students the actual behavioral precedents that bring zygotes, fetuses and birthed babies into existence in the first place, or what babies’ final arrival fully portends for the parents and society at large. But abstinence instruction — long debunked as ineffective —  is mandated under state law requiring “character development instruction.”

So, the new government-mandated videos were selected, it appears, not to fully educate, but to implant the images of computer-generated beautiful, vulnerable zygotes and fetuses in kids’ minds as a shame-inducing bulwark against future abortions.

That’s the mendacity, the deceit. Otherwise, sex-ed would be as robust and comprehensive in our schools today as it is in 36 other states and the District of Columbia.