The day before the 2026 March for Life, the Trump administration announced a pro-life policy change that advocates have pursued for more than two decades. “Effective the date of this Notice,” announced the National Institutes of Health (NIH), “NIH funds will not be permitted for research using HFT [human fetal tissue] from elective abortions.” In response to the announcement, Science Alliance for Life and Technology President Dr. David Prentice cheered, “This is a win not just for human dignity, but also for science — and the promotion of ethical science that respects every human life.”

Pro-life advocates have pointed out the ethical issues behind funding such research for years. After an unborn baby is aborted, the child’s remains are then sold to researchers who use them as raw material for experiments intended to promote health science. In reality, “human fetal tissue” is a euphemism for what the average person would easily recognize as “unborn baby body parts.”

Journalist David Daleiden vividly illustrated this fact in 2015 when he published undercover videos showing Planned Parenthood employees deliberately carrying out an abortion in a way to maximize the saleable value of the baby’s body parts. “David Daleiden’s undercover videos exposing the trafficking in baby body parts opened the eyes of the nation to this horrific research endeavor and helped pave the way to the current decision,” Prentice assessed.

The graphic videos provoked a furious reaction, and Daleiden was targeted with a multi-year prosecution by then-California Attorney General Kamala Harris and her successor in office, then-Attorney General Xavier Becerra. Of course, these figures went on to serve as vice president and HHS secretary in the Biden administration.

However, not all medical research conducted with human remains is unethical. Ethically speaking, a wide chasm exists between a dying person donating their body to science and an unscrupulous profiteer deliberately ending a person’s life to sell their organs — like the Chinese Communist Party’s practice of organ harvesting.

NIH did not ban all research with human fetal tissue; it prohibited funding for research using tissue obtained through elective abortion, while conceding, “NIH funds are permitted for use of research involving HFT obtained from miscarriage or stillbirth.” However, Prentice set this allowance in context, “Fetal tissue research from ethically derived sources can still continue, but the newer, more modern alternatives will likely supplant those tissue sources as well.”

“Modern science has developed numerous successful and ethical alternatives to the use of aborted human fetal tissue,” Prentice told TWS. “Therapies from adult stem cells, production of ‘mouse models’ using umbilical cord blood, and development models using organoids that faithfully replicate human organ development all provide ethical and more effective alternatives to aborted baby body parts. After decades of fighting against the unethical research with fetal tissue, it’s good to see that grisly chapter of human experiments closed.”

“NIH is pushing American biomedical science into the 21st century,” NIH Director Jay Bhattacharya explained. “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.”

As an additional justification, Bhattacharya also cited “NIH’s responsibility to ensure that research supported by taxpayer funds is scientifically rigorous, ethically sound, and justified by a maximal return on the public’s investment.”

In its Thursday announcement, NIH revealed that “NIH-supported research using human fetal tissue has declined steadily since 2019, with only 77 projects funded in Fiscal Year 2024.” This decline is due both to the advent of more promising alternative technologies and to the work of the Human Fetal Tissue Research Ethics Advisory Board. In 2020, NIH established the board to make recommendations about “whether the Secretary [of Health and Human Services] should withhold funds or not withhold funds from a proposed project because of ethical considerations.”

Going back to the George W. Bush administration, pro-life advocates have called for an end to government funding of research using the remains of aborted babies. However, researchers countered that such research greatly benefited medical science and would soon lead to abundant cures. With the help of a sympathetic media establishment and the abortion lobby, the pragmatic arguments drowned out moral ones.

When the debate reached its height, Prentice took a sabbatical from his professorship at Indiana State University to scientifically defend the pro-life position. He argued that fetal stem cells were “ill-suited for clinical use,” had trouble integrating into the body, and could trigger a hostile immune response. For his efforts, the university punished Prentice, reducing his teaching assignments and lab privileges.

Pro-life advocates had greater success persuading the first Trump administration to curtail the research practice, and the second Trump administration has now finished the job by cutting off all federal funding to research using aborted human fetal tissue.

Prentice concluded, “My colleagues in our new organization, Science Alliance for Life and Technology (SALT), are gratified to see the years of struggle to disseminate the truth pay off in this new announcement from NIH.”