The US Department of Health and Human Services (HHS) has prohibited the use of human fetal tissue obtained from elective abortions in taxpayer-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,” HHS Secretary Robert F. Kennedy Jr. said in a statement. “Science supports this change, ethics demand it, and we will enforce this standard consistently across the department.”
HHS said in its announcement, which was released on the same day as the 53rd annual March for Life, that its new policy is consistent with the Trump administration’s priorities to “preserve the sanctity of human life and modernize biomedical science.” This measure applies consistently to grants, contracts, and programs administered throughout the Department.
According to HHS, the National Institutes of Health (NIH), which distributes most HHS medical research funds, is implementing this policy in its Intramural Research Programs and all NIH-supported extramural research, including grants, cooperative agreements, other transaction awards, and research and development contracts. This action follows from previous NIH guidance and “The study “reflects a shift toward validated research models better suited to today’s rapidly evolving scientific landscape, including advances in organoids, tissue chips, computational biology, and other cutting-edge platforms,” the agency said.
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“NIH is driving American biomedical science forward into the 21st century,” NIH Director Jay Bhattacharya said in a statement. “This decision is about advancing science by investing in technologies more capable of modeling human health and disease. Under President Trump’s leadership, taxpayer-funded research must reflect the best of today’s science and the values of the American people.”
The Daily Wire’s Mary Margaret Olohan first reported that HHS had 77 projects using human fetal tissue that were funded by NIH through the 2024 fiscal year. NIH told the outlet that the numbers represent a steady decline since 2019.
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During President Donald Trump’s first term in office in 2019, he banned new funding for fetal tissue research and ended all in-house NIH research using body parts from aborted babies.
When the staunchly pro-abortion Biden administration took office in 2021, NIH, under the authority of HHS, announced it would reverse the Trump administration’s decision to end taxpayer funding for experimental research that uses fetal tissue obtained from aborted babies.
After President Trump was re-elected to his second term, now-HHS Secretary Robert F. Kennedy Jr. pledged at his Senate confirmation hearing to revive the ban.
The 2026 ban goes further than actions taken during President Trump’s first term, the Daily Wire reports.
“Under the first Trump administration, the President banned the intramural use of aborted fetal tissue, meaning research conducted within United States government facilities,” Olohan wrote. “This time, Trump’s NIH is going further, saying it will not fund any research involving tissues from aborted babies.
Katherine Hamilton is a political reporter for Breitbart News. You can follow him on x @thekat_hamilton.
