Trump Nominee Confirms NIH Won’t Do Research With Aborted Baby Parts
Ever since the Planned Parenthood abortion business was caught selling the body parts of aborted babies for grisly research, pro-life Americans have fought hard to expose the horrific practice.
Thankfully, during a Senate hearing today, President Donald Trump’s nominee for the National Institutes of Health director, Dr. Jay Bhattacharya told senators that NIH will not be using aborted baby parts in research.
Bhattacharya, a physician and health economist from Stanford University who gained international acclaim after questioning COVID restrictions and policies, appeared before the Senate Health, Education, Labor, and Pensions Committee. His comments about research with aborted baby parts came during a question from pro-life Republican Sen. Josh Hawley.
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Hawley asked whether he would support the prohibition of using aborted fetal tissue for NIH-funded research.
Bhattacharya said he is “absolutely committed” to not using research with organs from aborted children.
“In public health, we need to make sure the products of science are ethically acceptable to everybody,” Bhattacharya said. “And so having alternatives that are not ethically conflicted with fetal cell lines is not just an ethical issue, but it’s a public health issue.”
.@DrJBhattacharya promised me NO aborted fetal tissue in NIH funded research
Looking forward to voting for him to be our next NIH Director pic.twitter.com/hIzIom57d0
— Josh Hawley (@HawleyMO) March 5, 2025
During his previous administration, a bioethics advisory board appointed by President Donald Trump recommended that the government reject funding for 13 of 14 research projects that plan to use aborted baby body parts.
The New York Times called the board’s recommendations to U.S. Department of Health and Human Services (HHS) Secretary Alex M. Azar II a “de facto government ban” on funding scientific research that uses cells from aborted babies.
The recommendations are good news. Pro-life leaders have 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.
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 only would use ethically derived materials instead.
“During discussion of a number of the proposals for which the majority of members ultimately voted to recommend withholding funds, some members expressed support for particular projects should the portion(s) involving HFT be removed,” the report states. “In particular, this was true of several projects that proposed direct comparison to models derived from human fetal tissue as encouraged in recent NIH solicitations focusing on research to develop, demonstrate and validate alternate experimental human tissue models.”
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 scientists to use ethically-derived materials to do so.
The final grant proposal that the board recommended approval of is in line with this goal. According to Buzz Feed News, the scientists in that project hope to develop alternatives to tissue from aborted babies for research projects. They plan to use cells already “stored in a bio-repository and collected according to guidelines, with no need to acquire additional tissue for the planned studies,” the report states.