In a victory for pro-life groups, HHS just ended a big contract with UCSF that involved the use of fetal tissue for research. It also said it will end research with the National Institutes of Health on the same grounds:
REUTERS – The Trump administration on Wednesday said it would end scientific research at the National Institutes of Health that relies on fetal tissue from elective abortions, and would accelerate efforts to find alternatives for such research, a move welcomed by anti-abortion groups.
The U.S. Department of Health and Human Services also said on Wednesday it ended a $2 million-a-year contract with the University of California, San Francisco (UCSF), that involved the use of fetal tissue. In September, the agency ended a contract between Advanced Bioscience Resources Inc and the Food and Drug Administration, that used fetal tissue to develop testing protocols.
HHS said it ended the contract with UCSF for ethical reasons, but did not specify what those were. NIH declined to comment, referring all questions to HHS.
But according to Reuters, there are still other projects that use fetal tissue:
There are 200 external government-funded projects that use fetal tissue that will not be affected by the decision, an HHS spokeswoman said. The new policy affects three of NIH’s 3,000 internal projects, she said, adding that they will be allowed to continue until fetal tissue material runs out.
The president of the Susan B. Anthony List says this is a major victory for the pro-life movement:
Anti-abortion advocates who have pressed the Trump administration to end fetal tissue research for months, declared the announcement “a major pro-life victory.”
“It is outrageous and disgusting that we have been complicit, through our taxpayer dollars, in the experimentation using baby body parts,” Marjorie Dannenfelser, president of the anti-abortion group Susan B. Anthony List, said in a statement.
This is definitely a move in the right direction and I’m glad to see the Trump administration moving its policies toward a pro-life position.