In a triumphant victory for life, last week President Donald Trump’s administration stated that it would no longer fund research that uses the body parts of aborted babies. The U.S. Department of Health and Human Services and the National Institutes of Health will not renew their contract with the University of California, San Francisco. The UCSF contract cancels more than $100 million in federal funding for research projects that use human fetal tissue.
According to Susan B. Anthony List President Marjorie Dannenfelser, “This is a major pro-life victory and we thank President Trump for taking decisive action. It is outrageous and disgusting that we have been complicit, through our taxpayer dollars, in the experimentation using baby body parts. NIH has spent $120 million a year on grisly, unethical experiments involving the hearts, livers, bones, and brains harvested from babies too young and vulnerable to speak for themselves.”
The Trump Administration has made promoting the dignity of human life from conception to natural death a top priority. In a statement from the Department of Health and Human Services, the HHS is also committed to “funding opportunity for research to develop, demonstrate, and validate experimental models that do not rely on human fetal tissue from elective abortions.”
There have been several, scientifically-proven methods that could be investigated instead of using aborted baby parts. Dr. David Prentice, vice president and research director at Charlotte Lozier Institute, commented that alternative methods such as “adult stem cells, iPS cells, organoids, humanized mice constructed using postnatally sourced cells and improved non-human cell lines—all of these have been used in the production of treatments, vaccines and medicines currently on the market; the key is that our government will now invest in effective research methods that do not rely on the destruction of human life.”
From a Christian perspective, we know life begins at the moment of conception. Psalm 139: 13 says, “For you created me in my inmost being; you knit me together in my mother’s womb.” We are so thankful that those in policy-making positions are now seeing this as well. We must continue to pray for those who do not that God would change their hearts and help them to see the error of their ways.