(Getty Images.)

(CNSNews.com) -- Pro-life leaders reacted strongly to the Oct. 17 story by CNSNews.com that exposed a multi-year federal contract between the National Institutes of Health (NIH) and the University of California-San Francisco (UCSF) to obtain aborted baby parts to make “humanized” mice for research purposes.

CNSNews.com reported that the $13,799,501 contract, which uses federal tax dollars, takes human fetal livers and thymuses from aborted babies of up to 24 weeks in gestational age and surgically transplants them into mice to give the mice “human” immune systems. The mice are then used in biomedical research.

The contract “creates a demand for organs taken from late-term aborted babies and its fulfillment is dependent on the continued legality of late-term abortions,” according to the CNSNews.com story.

Jeanne Mancini, president of the March for Life, called for the immediate termination of “all federal contracts” that involve the use of aborted fetal tissue.

“All federal contracts that involve the procurement of aborted human organs and tissue must immediately be terminated,” she said.

A baby in the womb. (YouTube)

“A majority of taxpayers do not want their money going toward abortion at all, much less propping up a marketplace for late-term-aborted baby parts used in experimental research,” she added, citing a Marist poll that found that 63% of Americans support a ban on abortion after 20 weeks, and that 60% of Americans “oppose using tax dollars to pay for abortion.”

Mancini suggested that the money instead be used to fund research that does not involve baby parts.

“Funds should be used instead towards successful alternatives that do not reduce a baby to the sum of her parts,” she said.

David Daleiden, founder of the Center for Medical Progress and the investigative journalist behind the 2015 undercover video exposé of Planned Parenthood’s alleged trafficking of baby parts, also condemned the use of baby parts to humanize mice, especially under the pro-life administration of President Donald Trump.

“It’s absolutely unconscionable that under a pro-life administration the pro-life Health and Human Services Department is maintaining a $13 million contract with the biggest abortion training school in the country,” Daleiden said at a press briefing hosted by the March for Life on Oct. 18.

In a statement sent to CNSNews.com, Daleiden said, “This highly lucrative government contract demands at least two late-term abortions of healthy, viable unborn children every month from University of California San Francisco, a major abortion training school. Sadly, this HHS aborted-baby-parts-quota contract is consistent with what Planned Parenthood and UCSF abortion doctors told CMP citizen journalists undercover about UCSF's taxpayer-funded late-term abortion practice.”

“Under no circumstances should this $13.8 million baby body parts contract be renewed in December,” he said.

The NIH wrote in a statement to CNSNews.com that the goal of the research is to “improve health and well-being.”

“Through research involving both humans and animals, scientists identify new ways to treat illnesses, extend life and improve health and well-being,” the NIH said.

The UCSF claimed that the research was “vital” in finding cures for “a wide variety” of illnesses.

“The University of California conducts research using fetal tissue that is vital to finding treatments and cures for a wide variety of adult and childhood diseases and medical conditions,” UCSF wrote to CNSNews.com.

Students for Life of America President Kristan Hawkins, however, likened the USCF’s research to the story of Dr. Frankenstein, the infamous fictional scientist whose attempt to create a life out of human body parts goes horribly wrong and creates a monster.

“It’s a Doctor Frankenstein kind-of program that takes the body parts [of] aborted infants for a macabre experiment. Sadly, it’s not a Halloween movie, but real life, and Students for Life of America calls on an end to all such programs that misuse human beings at taxpayer expense,” Hawkins wrote.