In a new announcement form his administration today, Joe Biden will make Americans fund research using body parts from aborted babies with their taxpayer dollars.
The Biden administration announced it is overturning a pro-life rule President Donald trump put in place barring taxpayer funding for federally-funded studies involving the use of fetal tissue taken from babies killed in abortions.
During his administration President Trump put in place a new bioethics advisory board recommending that the government reject funding for 13 of 14 research projects that plan to use aborted baby body parts. Trump appointed a number of leading pro-life researchers and bioethicists to the board.
But today the National Institutes of Health (NIH) officially rescinded the ban on using aborted baby parts in research.
Biden’s NIH released a notice saying that the agency was overturning the Trump administration’s policy that required all applicants for NIH grants involving fetal tissue from elective abortions to be reviewed by an ethics board. The notice indicated Biden was cancelling the ethics advisory board.
“NIH reminds the community of expectations to obtain informed consent from the donor for any NIH-funded research using human fetal tissue … and of continued obligations to conduct such research only in accord with any applicable federal, state, or local laws and regulations, including prohibitions on the payment of valuable consideration for such tissue,” the notice reads.
A leading pro-life group immediately condemned the decision.
“Biden and Harris, working hand-in-glove with radical appointees like Xavier Becerra, are moving rapidly to pay back their abortion industry allies and wipe out pro-life progress made under the Trump-Pence administration,” said SBA List President Marjorie Dannenfelser. “From day one they have sought to expand abortion on demand, funded by taxpayers, against the will of the strong majority of Americans. Now they would force Americans to be complicit in barbaric experiments using body parts harvested from innocent children killed in abortions, with no limits of any kind. Pro-abortion Democrats push this deeply unpopular agenda at their own political peril.”
And a pro-life scientists indicated research with aborted baby parts is unnecessary.
Dr. Tara Sander Lee, senior fellow and director of life sciences at Charlotte Lozier Institute, added: “The HHS decision to resume experiments using the body parts of aborted children defies both the best ethics and most promising science. Exploiting the bodies of these young human beings is unnecessary and grotesque. Fetal tissue was not, and has never been, used for polio or any other vaccine, nor to produce or manufacture any pharmaceutical. There are superior and ethical alternatives available such as adult stem cell models being used by countless scientists worldwide to develop and produce advanced medicines treating patients now, without exploitation of any innocent life. All scientists should reject the administration’s attempts to prey on fears related to the pandemic to advance the practice of harvesting fetal tissue.”
Pro-life leaders had been urging the Trump administration to stop using tax dollars to fund unethical research for years. Under the Obama administration, millions of tax dollars were used to fund disturbing research studies, including one to create “humanized mice” with tissue from potentially viable aborted babies.
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The Trump administration canceled that contract, and it has been taking other steps to stop funding unethical research, including through the formation of the new advisory board.
The board examined 14 research grant proposals based on “the scientific justification for the use and quantity of HFT [human fetal tissue] proposed and the use of alternate models” as well as whether there was adequate informed consent for the mothers donating it, according to the report.
By a majority vote, it rejected recommending all but one of the requests for funding. Among their concerns were a study that was “too interwoven with the practice of abortion” and others that could have used tissue from miscarried babies instead.
The board report noted that many members expressed support for the research projects if they would use ethically derived materials instead.
Notably, in 2018, HHS created a new $20 million grant to invest in ethical alternatives to aborted baby parts in scientific research. It was part of the Trump administration’s plan to support scientific advances and encourage ethical research.
Abortion activists and liberal news outlets have accused the advisory board of being biased, but even some critics admitted that the board members include real scientists and bioethicists who understand the importance of research.
The Trump administration has been listening to pro-life advocates’ pleas to stop using taxpayer funding for research using aborted baby body parts through the NIH.
Also, Trump officials ended a contract between the NIH and the University of California San Francisco that was using aborted baby body parts to create “humanized mice” for medical experimentation. A few months earlier, the NIH introduced new rules restricting taxpayer-funded research that uses aborted babies’ body parts.
In 2018, a CNS News report shed light on how taxpayers’ money was being spent on these ethically troubling experiments. It exposed the NIH contract with University of California San Francisco for experiments involving “humanized mice.”
Aborted baby body parts used in the experiments were taken from healthy, later-term unborn babies. According to the report, the aborted babies were 18 to 24 weeks gestation from “women with normal pregnancies before elective termination for non-medical reasons.” Another article indicated aborted babies’ livers and thymuses also were used. They were between 20 weeks and 24 weeks gestation.
A 2017 journal article indicates researchers also used aborted babies’ intestines in their experiments.
Some scientists have complained about the Trump administration’s changes. But others say research using human fetal tissue has not been successful. Researchers at the Charlotte Lozier Institute said there are ethical alternatives available to scientists that do not involve the destruction of a human life.
