NIH Won’t Renew Grants for Experiments Using Tissue From Aborted Babies

The National Institutes of Health (NIH) announced Wednesday that it will not renew 17 grants for research using tissue from aborted babies — less than a day after a watchdog group revealed the grants were still active despite Trump administration promises to terminate them.

Breitbart News reported Wednesday that the White Coat Waste Project (WCW) had uncovered the grants, many of which “funded experiments on animals implanted with body parts from aborted babies.” According to WCW, the grants totaled almost $22 million in 2024, with some “scheduled to run until at least June 2026” and possibly be renewed.

“Taxpayers shouldn’t be forced to foot the bill for nightmarish experiments that implant fingers, scalps, and other pieces of aborted human fetuses into lab animals,” WCW founder and president Anthony Bellotti told Breitbart.

Fetal Position

Asked for comment, the NIH emailed Breitbart hours later:

NIH takes this issue very seriously and remains committed to the highest ethical standards in research. The referenced grants, initiated under the Biden administration, will not be renewed.

NIH is guided by a commitment to valuing human life and ensuring that federally funded research is conducted responsibly and transparently. We are actively reviewing these matters and will take all necessary steps to ensure our policies reflect that commitment.

How much stock one can put in the NIH’s supposed “commitment” is in doubt. According to The Washington Stand:

The NIH has a surprisingly lengthy history of funding research using fetal tissue, beginning with vaccine research in the 1950s. Particularly in the 1960s, fetal tissue from abortions was used to develop the polio vaccine. Safeguards put in place following the U.S. Supreme Court’s Roe v. Wade decision in 1973 made research using aborted fetal tissue more difficult, but not impossible. President Ronald Reagan halted the use of aborted fetal tissue during his tenure in the White House, but President Bill Clinton revived the practice, which continued under Presidents George W. Bush and Barack Obama. During his first term, [President Donald] Trump put a stop to the use of aborted fetal tissue in scientific research, but [President Joe] Biden did away with those safeguards.

WCW calculated that Trump’s first-term ban on new funding for such research “led to a more than 50% cut in NIH spending on fetal tissue experiments.”

Animal Frights

Both Health and Human Services Secretary Robert F. Kennedy, Jr., and NIH Director Jay Bhattacharya pledged to put an end to such spending. But neither, it seems, had acted on his promise until WCW brought the grants to light.

All but one of the grants “funded cruel animal experiments,” penned WCW. “Many of these active NIH-funded human fetal tissue grants have recently paid for experiments that create so-called ‘BLT mice’ — animals implanted with pieces of bone marrow, liver, and thymus from aborted human fetuses.”

The watchdog group continued:

Previously, WCW exposed how NIH-funded experimenters at colleges and other labs implanted the reproductive tracts from human fetuses — including from a pair of aborted twins — into mice dosed with synthetic estrogen. In another, experimenters transplanted human fetal intestines onto the outside of mice’s bodies.

Another NIH-funded lab harvested scalps from aborted human fetuses and transplanted them onto mice and rats. The experimenters then watched human hair grow on the animals, and took pictures. 

WCW exposed how NIH-funded experimenters implanted tiny fingers from 18-week-old human fetuses into the backs of 5-day-old mice. Four weeks after implantation, the taxpayer-funded lab broke the fingers and left them, fractured, on the baby mice for another two weeks.

WCW also documented how an NIH-funded lab extracted testicle cells from monkeys and aborted human fetuses, then implanted the cells into irradiated “nude mice” who’d been specially bred to have compromised immune systems. 

Acts of Congress

In February, WCW, which opposes taxpayer-funded animal experiments, told the House Committee on Oversight and Accountability about these abuses and more — including $10 million spent on “transgender” animal experiments.

As a result of this testimony, Representative Bob Onder (R-Mo.) introduced legislation in March that would “prohibit the federal government from conducting or supporting any research involving human fetal tissue that is obtained pursuant to an induced abortion.” Oversight Committee member Representative Eli Crane (R-Ariz.), who co-sponsored the bill, told Breitbart, “We can’t allow degenerate mad scientists to engage in this immoral behavior.”

Onder’s bill appears to have stalled in committee.

However, on September 2, the House Appropriations subcommittee that funds the NIH approved a bill that, among other things, would also defund research involving fetal tissue obtained via abortion.

While that bill makes its way through Congress, at least taxpayers now have some assurance that the NIH won’t be funding any further fetal-tissue research for the foreseeable future.

That makes pro-lifers happy. Mary Szoch, director of the Family Research Council’s Center for Human Dignity, told The Washington Stand:

The Biden administration had no qualms about violating the dignity of human beings — especially those whose lives ended in the womb. There are loads of questions that should be asked about the government-funded research on these aborted babies, including whether abortion facilities were paid for these body parts.

Szoch urged her fellow Americans to “pray for the Trump-Vance administration to continue courageously working to ensure that, in America, the dignity of the unborn is respected.”

Of course, the best way to ensure Washington doesn’t fund unethical research is to respect the Constitution, which grants the federal government no authority to bankroll scientific research of any kind.