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The Department of Health and Human Services (HHS) has ended the use of tissue from aborted babies in research projects funded by the agency.
As tens of thousands of pro-life Americans descended Friday on the National Mall for the 53rd annual March for Life, HHS Secretary Robert F. Kennedy, Jr. announced the end of the policy of allowing aborted baby tissue for federally-funded research.
“HHS is ending the use of human fetal tissue from elective abortions in agency-funded research and replacing it with gold-standard science,” Kennedy said. “The science supports this shift, the ethics demand it, and we will apply this standard consistently across the Department.”
The new policy intends to further the Trump Administration’s priorities to uphold the sanctity of human life and update biomedical science. The directive will apply to the “National Institutes of Health (NIH) Intramural Research Program and all NIH-supported extramural research, including grants, cooperative agreements, other transaction awards, and research and development contracts.”
The policy is a significant expansion of one enacted during the first Trump administration, when the use of aborted baby tissue was banned only in research performed within facilities operated by the United States government. The new plan, however, addresses the concern that body parts of aborted babies may be sold to researchers working outside the government but whose projects are still funded by American taxpayers.
This issue especially drew frequent headlines, beginning in 2015, when pro-life activist David Daleiden, founder of the Center for Medical Progress, began releasing bombshell undercover videos of abortion industry officials engaged in the sale of aborted baby organs and tissue.
While NIH Director Jay Bhattacharya has addressed the new policy as one that is “advancing science by investing in breakthrough technologies more capable of modeling human health and disease,” it’s clear the deep ethical issues involved in the use of aborted babies as a mere product is also central to the new directive.
As the Daily Wire noted, Bhattacharya told the news outlet’s Editor Emeritus Ben Shapiro that the use of aborted baby tissue in federally-funded research has been highly controversial and a practice that has placed “a large part of the population” in an ethical dilemma.
“Now that there is better technology, there’s no scientific harm to this, we’re still going to be able to use the science we need … while at the same time getting rid of this use of aborted fetal tissue which so many people, including me, find morally abhorrent,” Bhattacharya said.
The NIH director noted that only tissue from elective abortions is banned under the new policy, underscoring further the Trump administration’s commitment to its standing as the “global leader in biomedical innovation,” while still representing the American people’s values of human dignity and “responsible stewardship of taxpayer dollars.”
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