WASHINGTON — An anti-abortion group is calling for a Senate investigation into the National Institutes of Health’s (NIH) funding of research that used fetal organs and tissue.
In January of this year, the NIH announced it was stopping money meant for research that used fetal tissue from elective abortions, but the 40 Days for Life organization wants an inquiry into government-funded studies undertaken before the new rule took effect.
“We have a unique perspective on the damage that abortion causes, women, society and obviously, the unborn. We also see daily the abuses of the abortion industry, including the exploitation of aborted baby body parts and tissues,” the group’s president, Shawn Carney, wrote in a Thursday letter.
Carney urged Senate Judiciary Committee Chairman Chuck Grassley (R-Iowa) and Senate Committee on Health, Education, Labor and Pensions (HELP) Chairman Bill Cassidy (R-La.) to conduct the probe.
“We respectfully urge your committees to investigate whether NIH’s practices complied with the laws, regulations, Congressional funding restrictions, and ethical requirements expected of our nation’s public health institutions,” he added.
On July 29, Sen. Joni Ernst (R-Iowa) confronted Dr. Anthony Fauci over taxpayer-funded research with fetal parts when he appeared before a Senate panel to face questioning on COVID-19.
During a line of questioning that went viral, Ernst recounted how researchers took parts from human fetal organs and put them into mice.
Fauci invoked his Fifth Amendment right against self-incrimination and declined to answer Ernst’s questions about the practice.
“American taxpayers financed experiments in which researchers surgically implanted livers, thymuses, and chunks of lung from nearly five-month-old aborted human babies into mice—experiments the researchers themselves named ‘BLT-L’ mice and described as a ‘sandwich of aborted body parts,’ Carney wrote.
Since 2018, NIH spending on human fetal tissue research has declined from nearly $120 million that fiscal year to approximately half that amount in fiscal year 2024, according to the agency itself.
The Trump administration argued in ending government fetal tissue research that alternatives such as “organoids, tissue chips, computational biology, and other cutting-edge platforms” have rendered the practice unnecessary.
The Trump administration has also taken steps to reduce animal testing in government-funded research.
Reps for Cassidy, Grassley, and the NIH did not immediately return requests for comment on the 40 Days for Life letter.
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