United States of America

NIH Ends Fetal Tissue Research From Elective Abortions

Does ending fetal tissue research modernize science or does it dangerously reject evidence-based medical progress?

Published JAN 23

NIH Ends Fetal Tissue Research From Elective Abortions

Story

Above: The National Institutes of Health headquarters in Bethesda, Maryland, on May 10, 2025. Image credit: Bill Clark/CQ-Roll Call, Inc/Getty Images

The Facts

The U.S. Department of Health and Human Services' National Institutes of Health (NIH) announced a new policy on Thursday prohibiting the use of human fetal tissues (HFT) from elective abortions in NIH-supported research, effective immediately.
National Institutes of Health (NIH)
FOX News
CNN
The shift in policy revives and expands restrictions originally imposed during U.S. President Donald Trump's first term, which banned funding for internal NIH research using HFT. U.S. President Joe Biden lifted the constraints in 2021.
guardian
The Washington Examiner
National Institutes of Health (NIH)
National Institutes of Health (NIH)
The new policy impacts both the NIH Intramural Research Program and all its extramural research, including applications for grants, cooperative agreements, transaction awards, and research and development contract proposals.
National Institutes of Health (NIH)
Projects that have already received NIH support, meanwhile, must rebudget their released funds to conduct alternative forms of research permitted by the policy, which carries exemptions for HFT obtained from miscarriages or stillbirths.
National Institutes of Health (NIH)
In a statement, the NIH said the move was part of the Trump administration's effort to "modernize biomedical science and accelerate innovation," with its director, Jay Bhattacharya, claiming that the policy was about "investing in breakthrough technologies more capable of modeling human health and disease."
National Institutes of Health (NIH)
According to the NIH's figures, the use of HFT in NIH-supported research has been on the decline since 2019, with the agency funding only 77 projects involving HFT in the 2024 fiscal year.
National Institutes of Health (NIH)

Sources Split

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The Spin

Pro-government narrative

Ending taxpayer funding for fetal tissue research from elective abortions is a necessary step toward modernizing biomedical science. With only 77 HFT projects funded in the 2024 fiscal year and revolutionary alternatives, such as organoids and tissue chips, now available, directing limited funding toward cutting-edge technologies represents a better investment of NIH resources.

National Institutes of Health (NIH)

Government-critical narrative

Fetal tissue research has been indispensable to biomedical progress since the 1930s, contributing to the development of countless crucial vaccines, including polio, rubella, measles, rabies and COVID, among others. Banning the use of this critical resource, therefore, would be a catastrophic outcome for medicine and a dangerous rejection of evidence-based science.

International Society for Stem Cell Research