The chairman of the US bishops’ pro-life committee April 20 called on the Biden administration to fund research “that does not rely upon body parts taken from innocent children killed through abortion”.
“The bodies of children killed by abortion deserve the same respect as that of any other person,” said Archbishop Joseph Naumann of Kansas City, Kansas, chairman of the US Conference of Catholic Bishops’ Committee on Pro-Life Activities.
“Our government has no right to treat innocent abortion victims as a commodity that can be scavenged for body parts to be used in research,” he said.
His remarks were a reaction to a notice the National Institutes of Health in Bethesda, Maryland, posted April 16 in the grants area of its website announcing the end of a Trump administration ban on research involving human foetal tissue acquired from elective abortions.
In addition, NIH and the US Department of Health and Human Services will no longer convene the Human Foetal Tissue Research Ethics Advisory Board.
“It is unethical to promote and subsidise research that can lead to legitimising the violence of abortion,” Archbishop Naumann said in his statement.
“Researchers have demonstrated that we can do effective scientific research and develop efficacious clinical treatments without harvesting tissue from aborted babies. It is also deeply offensive,” he added, “to millions of Americans for our tax dollars to be used for research that collaborates with an industry built on the taking of innocent lives”.