‘Unconscionable’: Taxpayers Must Now Fund Trafficking of Baby Body Parts

The National Institutes of Health announced that the Department of Health and Human Services has reversed a policy put in place under President Donald Trump that halted all NIH funded research using aborted fetal tissue. The Biden administration will now force taxpayers to fund the trafficking of aborted baby body parts.

In June 2019, HHS changed its policy on the use of fetal tissue in projects done by researchers within HHS (intramural research) and by outside researchers receiving NIH funding (extramural research). This policy halted new research using fetal tissue of aborted babies at NIH facilities. For federally funded fetal tissue research outside NIH facilities, the agency required approval by federal ethics advisory boards.

This meant HHS would no longer conduct intramural research that requires new fetal tissue from elective abortions. This policy change applied to both new research and ongoing projects. Pursuant to federal law, new applications for extramural research using human fetal tissue would be subject to congressionally authorized review by an ethics advisory board.

In August 2020, the Human Fetal Tissue Research Ethics Advisory board issued a report to the Secretary of HHS and to Congress and recommended withholding funding for 13 out of the 14 research proposals submitted that would use the body parts of aborted babies.

Now the Biden HHS, under Xavier Becerra, will no longer require extramural research applications for NIH grants and contracts proposing the use of human fetal tissue from elective abortions to be reviewed by an independent advisory board. Research using fetal tissue will now move forward, and taxpayers will pay for barbaric experiments using the body parts of aborted babies.

Liberty Counsel represents Sandra Merritt in the eight remaining felony charges pending against her for her undercover journalism work which exposed Planned Parenthood’s trafficking in baby body parts. The bogus criminal investigation and heavy-handed tactics began under then-California Attorney General Kamala Harris and later her replacement, then-Attorney General Xavier Becerra, who originally filed 15 charges against Merritt and her co-defendant, David Daleiden, the founder of the Center for Medical Progress.

Merritt and Daleiden are the first undercover journalists to be criminally prosecuted in California’s history. Merritt’s appeal details with evidence that she did not intend to violate any laws but used legal undercover techniques to investigate and expose potential fetal-trafficking abuses and crimes committed by Planned Parenthood.

During a press conference, Becerra stood with a sign reading, “I Stand with Planned Parenthood.” In addition, Becerra has not shown, and cannot show, probable cause for any of the politically motivated charges.

Liberty Counsel founder and chairman Mat Staver said, “Taxpayer dollars to fund human genocide is unconscionable. People should never be forced to violate their conscience and sincerely-held religious beliefs to pad the pockets of those who profit from trafficking baby body parts.” {eoa}

This article originally appeared at lc.org.

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