The U.S. Department of Health and Human Services (HHS) yesterday announced it has put a halt to the permitted use of human fetal tissue from elective abortion in HHS-funded research. In a statement, HHS said that this new policy is in line with “the Trump administration’s priorities to uphold the sanctity of human life and modernize biomedical science.”
HHS Secretary Robert F. Kennedy, Jr. issued a directive that includes restrictions on grants, contracts, and programs administered across HHS.
“HHS is ending the use of human fetal tissue from elective abortions in agency-funded research and replacing it with gold-standard science,” Kennedy said. “The science supports this shift, the ethics demand it, and we will apply this standard consistently across the department.”
Vice President JD Vance celebrated the decision at the March For Life in Washington, D.C., where he also announced that the administration is investigating Planned Parenthood for possible fraud.
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At the “March for Life” JD Vance announces the investigation into affiliates of Planned Parenthood!And that they will not allow fetal tissue to be used in research!!
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— Freedom Force-Redpill the world (@freedom_force20) January 23, 2026
The National Institutes of Health (NIH), which administers most HHS medical research funding, will apply the new ban across what it calls the NIH Intramural Research Program and all NIH-supported extramural research, including grants, cooperative agreements, other transaction awards, and research and development contracts.
The Catholic News Agency reported that Fr. Tadeusz Pacholczyk, a neuroscientist and senior ethicist at the National Catholic Bioethics Center, described the move as “a very welcome development.”
He told EWTN News, “Biomedical research should not be built on the backs of directly-aborted human fetuses or embryos, and taking their bodily tissues for research necessarily involves a failure to obtain valid informed consent, a key ethical principle guiding all modern bioresearch.”
HHS said that the new policy replaces all prior NIH guidance, and represents a shift toward validated research models that are “better suited to today’s rapidly evolving scientific landscape, which includes advances in organoids, tissue chips, computational biology, and other cutting-edge platforms.”
NIH Director Jay Bhattacharya said, “NIH is pushing American biomedical science into the 21st century. This decision is about advancing science by investing in breakthrough technologies more capable of modeling human health and disease.”
As you would expect, Big Abortion’s allies in the peanut gallery had to weigh in.
Tyler Lamb, the director of policy for the International Society for Stem Cell Research (ISSCR) told Fierce Biotech that “human fetal tissue research has been indispensable to understanding human development and advancing treatments for devastating diseases, from cancer and Parkinson’s to diabetes and rare neurological disorders…Denying NIH-funded researchers access to HFT will likely delay discoveries and delivery of therapeutics to patients in need.”
Crocodile tears, I’d say.
Shifting Away from Embryonic Stem Cells
The rollout of the new policy came after a week in which NIH suspended new embryonic stem cell line submissions.
The NIH announced that it was seeking public comment on new ways to replace research reliance on human embryonic stem cells. The NIH detailed its new Request for Information (RFI) document that solicits input from the public on what it described as “the robustness of emerging biotechnologies to reduce or potentially replace remaining research reliance on human embryonic stem cells, which are derived from human embryos.”
NIH hopes to identify research in which human embryonic stem cells are no longer needed, given new technological developments with better effectiveness.
Emerging biotechnologies such as induced pluripotent stem cells and adult stem cells that are already approved can replace the use human embryonic stem cell lines. NIH also wants to identify areas where additional investments can and should be made to explore alternatives to embryonic stem cells.
Due to this latest development, NIH is pausing the review and approval of applications for new human embryonic stem cell lines to be added to the NIH Human Embryonic Stem Cell Registry.
At the moment, 503 human embryonic stem cell lines have been approved for NIH-supported research. Since the NIH established its Guidelines for Stem Cell Research in 2009, the number of cell lines submitted for review has declined. The last approved cell line added to the NIH Registry was in Dec. 2023.
The battle against abortion has now entered the long game. Patience and day-to-day vigilance is critical. Chalking up small and large, incremental wins is also very important. And the Trump administration is doing just that.
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