President Trump Cancels $2 Million Contract to Purchase Body Parts of Aborted Babies for Research, by Steven Ertelt

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By Steven Ertelt, LifeNews, June 5, 2019

WASHINGTON, DCPresident Donald Trump has canceled another contract to purchase the body parts of aborted babies for research.

The Trump administration has heard the concerns of pro-life organizations and pro-life Americans upset by the news that the FDA and NIH had purchased the body parts of aborted babies for research and this is the second time a federal contract has been scrubbed.

Details uncovered by CNS News in 2018 shed light on an NIH contract with University of California San Francisco, which provides money for fetal body parts to conduct experiments involving “humanized mice.”

Aborted baby body parts used in the experiments were taken from healthy, potentially viable unborn babies. According to the report, the aborted babies were 18 to 24 weeks gestation from “women with normal pregnancies before elective termination for non-medical reasons.” Another article indicated aborted babies’ livers and thymuses also were used. They were between 20 weeks and 24 weeks gestation.

But the Daily Caller reports today that President Trump has cancelled the contract:

President Donald Trump is canceling a contract that provides government funding to the University of California, San Francisco for research that issues fetal tissue harvested from elective abortions.

The Trump administration first focused its sights on the contract this past September, with the National Institute of Health (NIH) warning UCSF that its $2 million annual contract for fetal tissue research would be curtailed to 90 days and possibly canceled altogether.

Senior administration officials told The Daily Caller that the contract will be officially terminated Wednesday.

The cancelation stems from a 9-month U.S. Department of Health and Human Services (HHS) review of all research involving fetal tissue from elective abortions that found serious issues with UCSF’s research, including a lack of consent forms. HHS will also install ethics boards overseeing all extramural research involving fetal tissue.

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An official explained to the Caller that the move is part of “a consistent charge to take a pro-life perspective on all policies.”

The official argued that scientists have been claiming for 26 years that fetal tissue research would lead to significant medical breakthroughs, and yet “there have been exactly zero miracle cures.”

Leading pro-life groups were delighted by the news.

Dr. David Prentice, vice president and research director at Charlotte Lozier Institute, told LifeNews “Today’s move demonstrates NIH’s investment in scientifically-proven methods for research: adult stem cells, iPS cells, organoids, humanized mice constructed using postnatally sourced cells and improved non-human cell lines—just to name a few. 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.”

Dr. Grazie Pozo Christie, Policy Advisor for The Catholic Association, added, “Experimentation using the liver, lungs, hearts, skulls or any other body part of an aborted baby is morally corrupt. Taxpayers have been forced to fund inhumane procedures conducted by corporations looking to make a buck. President Trump made the moral and ethical call to end taxpayer funding of this gruesome experimentation.”

Family Research Council President Tony Perkins told LifeNews: “This is yet another step by the Trump administration in the march to restore the sanctity of all human life in America. This decision is one based upon the desire of this administration to use taxpayer dollars in the pursuit of science that is both ethical and effective.”

“The fact is aborted fetal tissue hasn’t been used to create the cure of a single disease. However, tax dollars have been contributing to an industry that fosters the trafficking of body parts from aborted babies. There is absolutely no reason to use these grisly remains when ethical and effective alternatives exist including human umbilical cord blood stem cells and adult peripheral blood stem cells,” he said.

“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,” said SBA List President Marjorie Dannenfelser. “President Trump knows we can do better as a nation and we are encouraged to see NIH Director Francis Collins carry out the President’s pro-life commitment. Taxpayer funding is better spent promoting alternatives that are already being used in the production of treatments, vaccines and medicines and to expand approaches that do not depend on the destruction of unborn children often through late-term abortion.”

This is the second time the Trump administration has cancelled a contract to purchase aborted baby parts.

Last August, shocking revelations indicated the Food and Drug Administration signed a new contract to acquire body parts from aborted babies to be transplanted into so-called humanized mice. The grisly experiments allow mice to have a functioning human immune system for research purposes.

By September, the Trump administration had canceled the contract with Advanced Bioscience Resources, a company that buys and sells aborted baby parts from Planned Parenthood and other abortion businesses.

When Planned Parenthood was exposed selling aborted baby parts for such research, videos recorded a conversation between Melissa Farrell, Director of Research for Planned Parenthood Gulf Coast, and two CMP actors posing as representatives of an organ procurement company. That conversation focused on potential compensation to Planned Parenthood in exchange for fetal remains.

Farrell made it clear that Planned Parenthood had been involved in the selling of aborted baby parts for some time and was very familiar with the use of fetal remains in the production of humanized mice.

She discussed how the Houston affiliate for which she worked was “resistant” to recent efforts by Planned Parenthood Federation of America to standardize fetal tissue sales throughout the participating affiliates because “we’ve been doing our own thing for a long time.”

She emphasized repeatedly that she creates a written line-item budget for compensation that effectively conceals the fact that the money received from fetal remains is actually a financial benefit to the company above and beyond hard costs.

In addition, she noted that they are able to alter abortion procedures to make sure they have baby parts to sell.

“And we have had studies in which the company, and or in this case, investigator, has a specific need for certain portions of the parts of conception and we base that into our contract and our protocol that we follow this, so we deviate from our standard in order to do that,” Farrell said, (emphasis added).

Yet Farrell acknowledged that it was illegal for them to alter the timing or manner of the procedure for the purpose of ensuring organs were fit for use by researchers.

In the lengthy video, Farrell is seen looking over her e-mail when she finds a message from an immune-biology laboratory that was requesting fetal tissue to create humanized mice.