The U.S. National Institutes of Health is ending support for research using human fetal tissue. Agency chief Jay Bhattacharya said in a statement on Thursday that the decision was motivated both by a need to cut costs and the “increasing availability of validated alternative technologies.”
The NIH currently has a nearly $48-billion budget, and in 2025 it spent $53 million on 77 projects that involved human fetal tissues, ranging from HIV studies to joint and tendon regeneration research to investigations into early human development. As of Thursday, U.S. Department of Health and Human Services press secretary Emily Hilliard told Scientific American, “NIH funds will not be permitted for research using HFT [human fetal tissue] from elective abortions.” For ongoing projects that have received NIH funding, that means the funds cannot be spent for experiments involving the tissues, but the grants will continue.
“There is some science you simply can’t do without these tissues,” says Jerome Zack, a distinguished professor of microbiology, immunology and molecular Genetics at the University of California, Los Angeles. “There are no good alternatives.” Effectively, his lab will have to segregate research involving such cells from other NIH-supported investigations. “There are not great alternate sources of funding for this work,” he says. “It doesn’t make sense; we are trying to help people.”
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Human fetal tissues are commonly defined as cells obtained from a dead human embryo or fetus after a spontaneous or induced abortion or stillbirth. (Although an NIH notice on Thursday said the agency’s funds could still be used for research on such tissue from miscarriage or stillbirth, these sources do not work well for research.) Medical researchers have relied on the cells for decades for a myriad of scientific purposes, from developing vaccines to studying disease in “humanized” mice models.
The NIH’s move has revived a politically contentious issue that pits abortion opponents—who have been among the most reliable supporters of the Trump administration but are now wavering—against researchers and patients who are pursuing cures for diseases, including ones that can begin in the womb.
“It’s clearly a political decision, not a scientific one,” says Lawrence Goldstein, an emeritus professor of cellular and molecular medicine at University of California, San Diego. “If you want to understand disease during fetal stages, you need the real thing as controls and guidance.”
Marjorie Dannenfelser, president and founder of the antiabortion group Susan B. Anthony Pro-Life America, called antiabortion actions by the Trump administration, including the NIH’s decision, “fantastic news” on Thursday, according to Politico.
This isn’t the first time fetal tissue research has come under federal fire: the George W. Bush administration made similar efforts to limit funding for embryonic stem cell research. The first Trump administration also saw furor over fetal tissues in biomedical research, an episode that culminated in a review board that was filled with abortion opponents nixing almost every already approved proposal for research using the tissues in 2020. The Biden administration reversed the first Trump administration’s restrictions in 2021 and approved new research using such tissues. (Zack notes that fewer fetal tissue projects are now being supported by the NIH—one of the justifications that Bhattacharya gave for the cutoff—precisely because of this history.)
“There’s already a general consensus that fetal tissue be used only where there is no adequate substitute and where there is substantial potential benefit, under strict ethical and regulatory parameters,” says health policy expert Alicia Ely Amin, a lecturer on law at Harvard University. “This NIH is once again placing political considerations ahead of the expertise of the scientists conducting specific research.”
Editor’s Note (1/23/26): This article was updated after posting to include additional information. It was previously updated on January 22. This story is in development and may be updated further.