In a press release dated September 24, 2018, The Department of Health and Human Services announced that it is terminating its contract with Advanced Bioscience Resources, a fetal tissue procurement company which contracted with multiple Planned Parenthood abortion facilities to harvest aborted fetal body parts to then sell to researchers. ABR was referred for criminal investigation by Congress after a thorough investigation into illegal fetal tissue trafficking in the United States.

Pro-life groups recently brought to light HHS’ contract with ABR, and along with that added scrutiny, various members of Congress as well as leaders of pro-life organizations issued letters to the FDA and HHS urging an end to the contract, which was providing “fresh” aborted human fetal body parts to create humanized mice. The HHS press release states:

After a recent review of a contract between Advanced Bioscience Resources, Inc. and the Food and Drug Administration to provide human fetal tissue to develop testing protocols, HHS was not sufficiently assured that the contract included the appropriate protections applicable to fetal tissue research or met all other procurement requirements. As a result, that contract has been terminated, and HHS is now conducting an audit of all acquisitions involving human fetal tissue to ensure conformity with procurement and human fetal tissue research laws and regulations.

In addition, HHS has initiated a comprehensive review of all research involving fetal tissue to ensure consistency with statutes and regulations governing such research, and to ensure the adequacy of procedures and oversight of this research in light of the serious regulatory, moral, and ethical considerations involved.

Finally, HHS is continuing to review whether adequate alternatives exist to the use of human fetal tissue in HHS funded research and will ensure that efforts to develop such alternatives are funded and accelerated.”

David Daleiden, project lead with The Center for Medical Progress, whose undercover investigations into Planned Parenthood and the abortion industry’s grisly trade of selling aborted baby body parts horrified the world, reacted to the news from HHS, stating, “So long as HHS trades taxpayer dollars for freshly-aborted baby body parts, the U.S. government is setting its own abortion quotas and sending the message that these children are worth more dead than alive.”

READ: California Planned Parenthood stands to make $1M yearly from aborted baby parts sales

Daleiden added that ending the contract is “a small first step to stop the epidemic of trafficking tiny baby hearts, lungs, livers, and brains from late-term abortion clinics into government-sponsored laboratories for taxpayer-funded experimentation.”

But, Daleiden says, this isn’t enough:

Last year, the U.S. Department of Justice announced that ABR was one of multiple entities under federal investigation for the illegal sale of baby body parts for profit based on criminal referrals by two Congressional committees. Now that HHS has found cause for termination of ABR’s continuing baby body parts sales, DOJ must do its job and follow through on the criminal referrals for ABR, Planned Parenthood, and similar entities with vigorous prosecution.

HHS’s newly-announced review of fetal tissue procurement and experimentation must be exacting, and it must terminate all other agreements for baby body parts with ABR, StemExpress, and similar business partners with Planned Parenthood and the abortion industry.

Daleiden says “transparency” about any kind of harvesting or experimentation using aborted baby body parts is absolutely necessary, adding that he plans to file a Freedom of Information Act request “to surface all the relevant facts and details about the $100 million in taxpayer money spent on HHS’s most recent round of baby body parts contracts and projects.”