Sometimes history affords actors in its dramas multiple opportunities to do the right thing to achieve success or ward off disaster. Other times that opportunity comes but once, and missing it has fateful consequences. That truism comes to mind with the unfolding tale — or trial, perhaps — of Dr. Anthony Fauci.

The long-awaited hearing before the U.S. Senate Committee on Homeland Security and Governmental Affairs last week did nothing to burnish Fauci’s fading reputation, and the best that can be said of it is that he comprehensively guarded against doing anything to repair that reputation. A wealth of literature exists that tells the story of Fauci’s deceit, despite the hearing’s opacity, but an underreported aspect of his malignancy reveals a sad truth: the careers of Dr. Fauci and his colleague Dr. Francis Collins were saved by a gaggle of pro-life senators in 2017 when moving on from them was finally possible.

Begin with revelations from the hearing that, apart from the COVID calamity, should have riveted the nation. Senator Joni Ernst (R-Iowa) took the lead in laying out the grotesqueries of Anthony Fauci’s embrace of exploiting organs and tissues from electively aborted unborn children for his favorite research. The details are stomach-churning. As revealed by David Daleiden and the Center for Medical Progress, a number of Planned Parenthood facilities across the United States provided a marketplace for fetal tissue and organs taken after elective abortions. The House Select Investigative Panel on Infant Lives held hearings in 2015 and 2016, releasing its final report in December 2016 during the transition from the Obama administration to the first term of President Trump.

Defenders of the practices identified in the report focused deftly on whether Planned Parenthood had violated existing laws outlawing profiteering from the sale of fetal organs for research. Daleiden’s videos of Planned Parenthood officials had demonstrated the indifference of the organization’s medical personnel to the human value of the lives destroyed in their buildings, including a notorious quip by a regional medical director that she wanted “a Lamborghini” to make the clinic’s involvement worthwhile and that she would explore having the doctor use a “less crunchy” technique to make more of the organs usable for research purposes. A compliant media and united Democratic front helped Planned Parenthood evade any liability for the abhorrent exploitation of these children.

The final report of the Select Investigative Panel went wisely to the heart of the matter: the profound abuse of innocent human life for the sake of research that violates ethical boundaries and yields nothing of value to the improvement of the human condition. The Panel recommended that “the National Institutes of Health be required to stop funding fetal tissue research, and that the huge health provider Planned Parenthood be stripped of U.S. funding.” Those months before the beginning of the first Trump administration proved pivotal for determining whether either or both of these policy recommendations could be achieved. In the summer of 2016, pro-life groups grappled with the question of whether to support the candidacy of Donald Trump given his history of statements that indicated his endorsement of legal abortion. An April 2024 analysis by NBC News detailed the many permutations of Trump’s public positions on abortion — “I am very pro-choice” he had said in 1999 — that had led wary pro-life leaders to approach his newfound declarations against abortion in 2016 with great caution.

To assuage those concerns, a coalition of pro-life leaders helmed by the Susan B. Anthony List negotiated with the Trump campaign to secure a letter committing the candidate to four key actions. The Trump letter said:

“I am committed to:

“Nominating pro-life justices to the U.S. Supreme Court.

“Signing into law the Pain-Capable Unborn Child Protection Act, which would end painful late-term abortions nationwide.

“Defunding Planned Parenthood as long as they continue to perform abortions, and reallocating their funding to community health centers that provide comprehensive health care for women.

“Making the Hyde Amendment permanent law to protect taxpayers from having to pay for abortions.”

The letter was a linchpin for the pro-life movement nationally to set aside its expressed reservations and back the Trump candidacy.

As the axiom has it, however, personnel is policy. That is particularly true in this fraught area where the bulk of the scientific establishment adheres to a permissive ethic on issues like abortion, cloning, embryonic stem cell research, genetic screening of embryonic humans, and other topics. In those crucial months, as the victorious Trump team planned to assume office, the question of the retention of Dr. Collins as the head of the National Institutes of Health naturally arose. Collins had skyrocketed to international fame as the head of the Human Genome Project, which finalized its unraveling of the genetic map of the human being in 2003. The research opened the horizon to a range of uplifting and disturbing uses, from the identification and potential cure of genetic-based diseases to screening and eugenic practices aimed at manipulating genetic traits and putting current individuals and future generations at risk.

Collins’s leadership coincided with what can be called a mechanistic or utilitarian view of the use of the remains of electively aborted children in publicly funded research projects. Despite the lack of therapeutic outcomes from such projects, Collins responded to the Select Panel’s report with a more or less “might as well” approach. Like other key federal officials in the new administration, Collins offered to step down for the president to appoint a new NIH director.

In April 2017, Dr. David Prentice, then-vice president and director of research at the Charlotte Lozier Institute, wrote an op-ed in USA Today calling on the new president to appoint a replacement for Collins. Dr. Prentice detailed how Collins, first appointed to the NIH role by Barack Obama, for whom he campaigned, supported the failed pursuit of embryonic stem cell research, human cloning for experimental purposes, and even the assembly of human-animal chimeras, which Dr. Prentice noted could result in the “creation of animals that could contain human sperm, human eggs or a human brain.” For Collins, use of harvested fetal organs from elective abortions was a non-issue.

Despite the best efforts of Dr. Prentice and other prominent scientists, the Trump administration elected to keep Collins in charge. For some, his connections in the evangelical world sufficed for him to clear the bar of acceptability. In May 2020, Collins was awarded a Templeton Prize of $1.3 million for his efforts, including extensive writings expounding on the connections between faith and public policy. At the pivotal moment when Collins’s retention occurred in early 2017, his cause was aided by Republican legislators on Capitol Hill who elevated him over concerns about his policy views on the sanctity of human life. The support of respected voices like Senator Roy Blunt, Senator Lamar Alexander, Rep. Tom Cole, and Rep. Fred Upton likely influenced Trump. In tandem with such a leading light, Anthony Fauci, who also endorsed and funded the use of aborted fetal tissue, was swept along into a Republican administration nominally supportive of the right to life.

As 2026 began, the second Trump administration came around to the ethical and scientific reality and ended at last federal support for human fetal tissue research involving elective abortions. The idea that this research is acceptable because these children no longer have need of their hearts, lungs, or other vital organs has been vanquished for now. But the funding of Planned Parenthood continues, and elective abortions are on the rise.

It is difficult to fault the first Trump administration overmuch because its decision on the celebrities of Collins and Fauci was fueled by party members on whom it would ordinarily rely. But the entire episode serves as a humble reminder about where decisions like these can lead, and why today’s battles in Congress don’t amount to the decision points they seem to be. Only a handful of pro-life leaders showed courage nearly a decade ago when the Collins-Fauci debacle might have been averted. What calamities down the road are at stake in the personnel decisions being made in federal health agencies today?