The Trump administration’s war on abortion rights is worse than you think

BY MICHELLE ONELLO, OPINION CONTRIBUTOR
09/22/20

The Trump administration has been executing a coordinated attack on what it sees as a critical public health issue. Unfortunately, the offensive is not targeting the COVID-19 pandemic, which has infected over six million people and claimed almost 200,000 lives in the US. Instead, the campaign has its sights set on women’s sexual health and reproductive rights, especially abortion. With the recent death of Supreme Court, Justice Ruth Bader Ginsburg threatening the fate of Roe v. Wade, the security of abortion rights has never been more precarious.

The administration’s brazen anti-abortion agenda includes not only well-publicized executive actions such as the expansions of the global and domestic gag rules, “conscience” exemptions to the Affordable Care Act’s contraceptive mandate, and the packing of courts with anti-abortion judges.

Continued: https://thehill.com/opinion/civil-rights/517664-the-trump-administration-war-on-abortion-rights-is-worse-than-you-think

Trump fetal tissue ethics board urges rejection of nearly all research proposals

By Amy Goldstein
August 18, 2020

A new advisory board, created to review the ethics of proposed fetal tissue research grants, is urging the Trump administration to block government funding for nearly all of the applications — essentially seeking to ban support for most such scientific work.

The recommendation that the National Institutes of Health withhold funds
from all but one of a slate of 14 research proposals means that Health and
Human Services Secretary Alex Azar, who has the final say, would need to buck
the will of a board he convened — and of social conservatives crucial to
President Trump’s political base — for the projects to get federal support.

Continued: https://www.washingtonpost.com/health/trump-fetal-tissue-research/2020/08/18/85902fcc-e157-11ea-8dd2-d07812bf00f7_story.html

Trump Just Stacked A Fetal Cell Research Panel With Abortion Opponents

Seen as the “gold standard” in many areas of medical research, fetal cells are widely used in coronavirus vaccine research.

Dan Vergano, BuzzFeed News Reporter
Posted on July 31, 2020

On Friday, a Trump administration panel erected to judge the ethics of federally funded research relying on human fetal cells met more than a year after it was first announced. Just hours before the meeting, the panel was revealed to be stacked with abortion opponents hostile to such research.

Human fetal cells are widely used in medical research to develop vaccines — notably in at least a half dozen current candidate coronavirus vaccines — as well for studying diseases including AIDS. The National Institutes of Health Human Fetal Tissue Research Ethics Advisory Board was initially announced in June of last year, putting a hold on grant applications for medical research involving human fetal cells. It followed the Trump administration’s moves to cancel related federal research contracts and audit human fetal cell research.

Continued: https://www.buzzfeednews.com/article/danvergano/trump-fetal-cell-ethics-panel-abortion