Trump NIH says it will end use of aborted fetal tissue for research

The Trump administration has announced that the National Institutes of Health (NIH) will no longer use fetal tissue from aborted babies in research.

Key Takeaways:

• Research using fetal tissue from elective abortions will no longer be permitted at NIH.

• Dr. Jay Bhattacharya had promised to end the practice during his nomination hearing.

• Disturbing research is known to have taken place using the bodies of aborted babies.

The Details:

In a press release, the NIH announced the policy change, which is effective immediately. The ban will apply to "the NIH Intramural Research Program and all NIH-supported extramural research, including grants, cooperative agreements, other transaction awards, and research and development contracts."

The announcement was made just one day before this year's March for Life in Washington, D.C.

“NIH is pushing American biomedical science into the 21st century,” Bhattacharya said. “This decision is about advancing science by investing in breakthrough technologies more capable of modeling human health and disease. Under President Trump’s leadership, taxpayer-funded research must reflect the best science of today and the values of the American people.”

The number of research projects using fetal tissue had already been declining, with 77 projects funded in FY 2024, and the press release noted there have been advances allowing ethical alternatives to be used instead moving forward.

Why It Matters:

A congressional hearing in February 2025 revealed some of the disturbing experiments that were utilizing tissue from aborted children. Much of the research involved transplanting the body parts into animals, with nearly 90% of the experiments funded by the National Institute of Allergy and Infectious Diseases (NIAID), one of 27 institutes and centers which make up NIH.

“We did an analysis a few years ago showing that over 90% of experiments using human fetal tissue (…) involved animals were funded by Fauci’s NIAID,” Justin Goodman, Senior Vice President at the White Coat Waste Project, testified. Goodman also explained that much of the tissue was coming from “colleges and universities that have affiliated hospitals that perform that procedure.”

The University of Pittsburgh (Pitt) is one of the universities known to have obtained fetal body parts from Planned Parenthood for various experiments. In 2015, the Center for Medical Progress' (CMP) David Daleiden released videos of the alleged illegal sales of fetal body parts for scientific experiments in the abortion industry; in 2021, he testified before the Pennsylvania House Health Committee about the relationship between Planned Parenthood and Pitt, and the experiments they carried out, with the information featured in a video.

CMP called Pitt a “hub for some of the most barbaric experiments carried out on late-term aborted human infants… funded by the United States Government.”

“Publicly available information demonstrates that Pitt hosts some of the most barbaric experiments carried out on aborted human infants, including scalping 5-month-old aborted fetuses to stitch onto lab rats, exporting fetal kidneys across the country, and killing infants delivered alive for liver harvesting – funded by U.S. taxpayers via the National Institutes of Health, and in particular Dr. Anthony Fauci’s NIAID office,” CMP wrote in a press release at the time.

Most of these aborted babies would have been old enough to have survived outside the womb, and their scalps and skin were sewn onto the backs of mice and rats. Spleens, lymphatic tissue, and other immune system cells were used to see how the organs responded to staph infections. Images from the research show human hair growing from the mice in a study published in the "Nature" medical journal.

The Bottom Line:

In a statement to the Daily Wire, Bhattacharya said this will be the end of such unethical research, saying, “Now that there is better technology, there’s no scientific harm to this, we’re still going to be able to use the science we need … while at the same time getting rid of this use of aborted fetal tissue which so many people, including me, find morally abhorrent."