Trump administration seeks pro-life alternatives to fetal tissue research

The Trump administration is allocating $20 million to determine effective alternatives to using tissue from aborted babies for research.

The announcement Monday from the Department of Health and Human Services comes after the administration in September terminated a government contract with California-based Advanced Bioscience Resources Inc. to provide human fetal tissue research.

“We are a pro-life, pro-science administration. This means that we understand and appreciate that medical research and the testing of new medical treatments using fetal tissue raises inherent moral and ethical issues,” HHS spokeswoman Caitlin Oakley said in a prepared statement.

After news that the Food and Drug Administration had renewed the contract with Advanced Bioscience Resources, 45 pro-life organizations wrote to Health and Human Services Secretary Alex Azar, asserting that it was “completely unacceptable to discover that the FDA is using federal tax dollars and fomenting demand for human body parts taken from babies who are aborted.”