The Trump administration has ended the government’s contract with a bioscience company that provided human fetal tissue from elective abortions for testing purposes.
The Food and Drug Administration no longer will obtain the fetal tissue from California-based Advanced Bioscience Resources Inc., the Department of Health and Human Services announced Wednesday.
The statement announcing the change said HHS was not satisfied with the results of a review it conducted to make sure that the procurements were in keeping with government regulations and with ethical and moral concerns.
“The Trump administration has rightfully taken action to separate federal research funding from the abortion industry,” Melanie Israel, a research associate at the DeVos Center for Religion and Civil Society at The Heritage Foundation, said in a written statement.
At the time the review began, HHS had a contract with the University of California, San Francisco to conduct fetal tissue research and had been reauthorizing the contract with 90-day extensions.
“The audit and review helped inform the policy process that led to the administration’s decision to let the contract with UCSF expire and to discontinue intramural research– research conducted within the National Institutes of Health (NIH)–involving the use of human fetal tissue from elective abortion,” HHS said in the statement.
“Intramural research that requires new acquisition of fetal tissue from elective abortions will not be conducted,” it said.
Israel said that the announcement from HHS helps ensure that scientific research is conducted with the highest moral standards.
“Good science and life-affirming, ethical research aren’t mutually exclusive,” Israel said, adding:
Indeed, it is ethically derived sources—such as discarded surgical tissue and adult stem cells—that have contributed to successful treatments for a variety of ailments, not tissue obtained from elective abortions.
The United States is a worldwide leader in pursuits of scientific discovery. Thanks to the Trump administration, federally funded projects will continue conducting vitally important, life-saving research while also respecting innocent human life.
Marjorie Dannenfelser, president of the Susan B. Anthony List, a pro-life advocacy organization, also praised the announcement.
“This is a major pro-life victory, and we thank President Trump for taking decisive action. It is outrageous and disgusting that we have been complicit, through our taxpayer dollars, in the experimentation using baby body parts,” Dannenfelser said.
“NIH has spent $120 million a year on grisly, unethical experiments involving the hearts, livers, bones, and brains harvested from babies too young and vulnerable to speak for themselves,” she said.
