Feds Will No Longer Use Your Tax Dollars To Do Experiments On Aborted Babies’ Bodies
By: Jordan Boyd, originally published January 22, 2026, The Federalist
For pro-lifers the NIH’s decision is a payoff on their decades-long lobbying effort to end taxpayer-funded experiments involving aborted babies.
American taxpayers will no longer fund research that uses aborted baby body parts after the National Institutes of Health announced on Thursday that it will cut financial ties with any programs experimenting with human fetal tissue obtained from elective abortions.
NIH marketed the historic move — which applies to “all NIH-supported extramural research,” such as grants, cooperative agreements, awards, and other contracts — as “a significant milestone in the Trump Administration’s efforts to modernize biomedical science and accelerate innovation.”
“NIH is pushing American biomedical science into the 21st century,” NIH Director Jay Bhattacharya said in a statement. “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.”
For pro-lifers who will gather together in Washington, D.C., to March for Life this weekend, the NIH’s decision is a payoff on their decades-long lobbying effort to end taxpayer-funded experiments involving aborted babies.
For decades, the people dedicated to protecting unborn babies and the sanctity of life have pleaded for a prohibition on the purchase of aborted baby body parts. Despite a partisan regulatory battle over the issue, one that spanned the Reagan, Clinton, Bush, Obama, and Trump administrations, the NIH ultimately poured millions of Americans’ hard-earned dollars into experiments on human fetal tissue obtained from elective abortions over a period that spans roughly 75 years.
Opposition to such experiments appeared to pick up momentum after Center for Medical Progress (CMP) undercover journalist David Daleiden recorded footage in 2015 showing Planned Parenthood staff discussing the process of harvesting aborted baby parts to traffic them. Clips of the footage, which then-California Attorney General Kamala Harris withheld from the public until a congressional subpoena in 2024, depict individuals identified as Planned Parenthood Gulf Coast Chief Medical Officer Dr. Ann Schutt-Ainé and Vice President of Abortion Access Tram Nguyen discussing the sale of fetal body parts.
California officially ended its years-long political prosecution of Daleiden and his partner for filming the interaction last year. Yet the federal government, even after the release of Daleiden’s footage and the exposure of barbaric experiments on aborted babies by the University of Pittsburgh, continued to allow the purchase of baby body parts with Americans’ hard-earned dollars in the name of science.
In fact, under the Biden administration, the U.S. Department of Health and Human Services halted the NIH ethics board assigned to oversee human fetal tissue research. At the bidding of President Joe Biden, HHS also reversed a first-term Trump administration rule that banned government employees from using tax dollars to buy human fetal tissue used in studies.
The NIH claims research involving aborted baby body parts has “declined steadily since 2019” but still accounted for 77 taxpayer-funded projects in the 2024 fiscal year. The agency’s latest pivot from experimenting on human fetal tissue, “mostly obtained” from elective abortions, to “robust alternatives that can drive discovery while reducing ethical concerns” should effectively bring that number down to zero.
“The updated policy ensures that limited public resources are directed toward research approaches that offer the greatest potential to improve health outcomes for all Americans,” the NIH announcement assured.
While the NIH will no longer finance research on aborted baby body parts, taxpayer-funded studies involving the remains of babies who were stillborn or miscarried will still be conducted.
Jordan Boyd is an award-winning staff writer at The Federalist and producer of “The Federalist Radio Hour.”