Trump administration ends federal funding for aborted fetal tissue research

The federal government will no longer allow taxpayer funds to be spent on research using tissue from the bodies of aborted babies, the National Institutes of Health (NIH) announced Jan. 22.

CatholicVote Director of Government Affairs Tom McClusky celebrated the decision as a victory for the pro-life movement, which has long opposed the practice.

“A few years ago, abortion giant Planned Parenthood and their co-conspirators were caught selling baby body parts scavenged from abortions,” McClusky said. “What you might not have known is that the federal government contributed to this atrocity by funding such ‘research.’”

“The Trump administration deserves high praise for recognizing every human being deserves dignity, born and unborn, in life as in death,” McClusky added. 

NIH, a division of the Department of Health and Human Services (HHS), is the nation’s primary medical research entity. According to a 2019 Congressional Research Service report, most fetal tissue used in NIH-supported studies came from elective abortions rather than miscarriages or stillbirths.

Under the new policy, which takes effect immediately, NIH funding will be barred for research using human fetal tissue obtained from elective abortions. The prohibition applies to all NIH-backed work, including internal agency research and external grants or contracts. It overrides previous guidelines that allowed such work under certain conditions.

NIH Director Jay Bhattacharya said the change reflects both “ethical concerns” and advances in biomedical technology that reduce the need for fetal tissue in research. The change aims to redirect resources toward alternative methods like “organoids, tissue chips, computational biology, and other cutting-edge platforms” that do not involve the remains of aborted babies.

Bhattacharya said federally funded research should reflect “the best science of today and the values of the American people.”

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