Biden’s Reversal of Fetal-Tissue Research Ban Is ‘Sickening,’ Say Pro-Lifers

On April 16, the U.S. Department of Health and Human Services (HHS) eliminated the requirement that applicants for federal research funding submit to a fetal-tissue ethics review. Since December 2019, proposals involving tissue from aborted babies had to receive a green light from an Ethics Advisory Board. At that board’s only meeting during the Trump presidency, it rejected 13 of 14 applications.

By disbanding the ethics board, says HHS Secretary Xavier Becerra, the Biden administration is permitting scientists “to do the research it takes to make sure that we are incorporating innovation and getting all of those types of treatments and therapies out there to the American people.”

Fetal Tissue Research: Proponents Call Move a Shift Toward Science

The scientific community praised Friday’s announcement, which came from the National Institutes of Health (NIH). Christine Mummery, president of the International Society for Stem Cell Research, says researchers appreciate “that the Biden administration is lifting the arbitrary restrictions on promising biomedical research using human fetal tissue.” She calls the decision a “return to evidence-based policy-making,” saying the NIH needs to be “insulated from political interference.”

Researcher Lawrence Goldstein, the only ethics-board member who had worked with fetal tissue, calls the ban reversal “an unqualified win.” He says he hopes projects that the board had “killed…will come back” and that we won’t “enter an era of policy yo-yo as we change administrations.”

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