The Dobbs decision of the United States Supreme Court and the actions of several state legislatures have made it risky, if not outright dangerous, to teach factual material concerning human embryology. At Idaho’s public universities, for instance, if a professor's lecture is felt to teach or discuss abortion (as it might when teaching about tubal pregnancies, hydatidiform moles, or eneuploidy), that instructor risks imprisonment for up to 14 years (Gyori 2023). The state's new censorship rules have thus caused professors to drop modules on abortion from numerous science and humanities courses. In most states, instructors can still teach about human embryonic development and not risk putting their careers or livelihoods in jeopardy. However, even in many of these institutions, students can bring a professor to a disciplinary hearing by claiming that the instructor failed to provide ample trigger warnings on such issues. This essay attempts to provide some strategies wherein human embryology and the ethical issues surrounding it might be taught and students may be given resources to counter unscientific falsehoods about fertilization and human development. This essay provides evidence for teaching the following propositions:•There is no consensus among biologists as to what embryonic stage represents the time when independent human life begins. Different groups of biologists have championed individual human life beginning at fertilization, gastrulation, the emergence of the electroencephalogram pattern, and viability/birth.•The genome is not the essence of the person. While the genome can set limits on the possibilities, behavioral phenotypes arise from other environmental sources. Identity of genotype does not mean identity of behavior, beliefs, or details of anatomy.•Fertilization is not ensoulment. Although popular culture often conflates DNA with "soul", biology does not. Similarly, "conception" is not the same as fertilization.•Birth is not merely a "delivery, " but constitutes a perilous process involving gene expression changes in the lung, heart, and brain wherein breathing is activated and the circulatory system is remodeled to go to and from the lungs rather than to and from the placenta.•.Most human embryos die before coming to term.Mis-information about human biology and medicine is rampant on the internet, and there are skills that can be taught to students that will help them determine which sites should trusted. This is a skill that needs to be taught as part of science courses.