Facing sustained pressure from pro-life activists to reverse Biden administration policies that made abortion pills much easier to obtain, most recently a disruptive protest outside the Department of Health and Human Services headquarters, the Trump administration tried to mollify the movement on lower visibility issues to coincide with Friday's March for Life.

About 20 minutes after the march's official 1 p.m. start, HHS Secretary Robert F. Kennedy Jr. directed the department's operating divisions and offices to "align their research practices" with the National Institutes of Health's brand-new decision to stop funding research enabled by elective abortions, however it happens.

That evening, NIH announced it was suspending review of submissions for new human embryonic stem cell lines, one of the most serious issues to confront first-term President George W. Bush before the September 11 terrorist attacks.

NIH portrayed both updates as phasing out research that was already in decline and redirecting its funding toward more advanced science.

Its prior update to the human fetal tissue policy, in August, reiterated that grantees and contractors are not allowed to purchase tissue affecting interstate commerce and must follow HHS "protection of human subjects" regulations, such as no inducement to abort or determine the timing or method of abortion, as Planned Parenthood allegedly did.

The Jan. 22 update disentangles NIH from human fetal tissue research made possible by elective abortions, citing the "sharp decline" in funded research since 2019 and "prioritizing limited resources toward biomedical research models with more relevance to today’s rapidly evolving research ecosystem." Research from stillbirth and miscarriage is still eligible.

Kennedy tied the HFT change to the March for Life and noted HHS's civil rights office just warned Illinois that its law violates federal healthcare conscience laws by tying "health care provider conscience protections to referral requirements" for abortion. HHS also released guidance on conscience protections on abortion, sterilization and assisted suicide.

The move supports "gold-standard science" and "the ethics demand" it, Kennedy said. NIH Director Jay Bhattacharya called it a long-delayed push of "American biomedical science into the 21st century … by investing in breakthrough technologies more capable of modeling human health and disease" and matching American "values."

The Jan. 23 pause on human embryonic stem cell line submissions also cites a decline in submissions to the NIH registry, with no approvals in two years and a plateau in NIH support since 2019, and the "increasing adoption of newer, more advanced biotechnologies involving nonembryonic (adult/somatic) stem cells and human induced pluripotent stem cells."

NIH issued a request for information on reducing reliance on hESCs in its funded research, asking where approved lines are "sufficiently" meeting research needs or where new lines are needed, research areas dependent on hESCs and others where emerging biotech can replace hESCs and where NIH should focus its funding.

HHS said the change will "put patients first," with Kennedy identifying a "responsibility to move beyond practices becoming obsolete and invest in more promising alternatives.” The announcement didn't mention that day's March for Life or ethical concerns.

'Trump-Vance administration' enables spike in abortions

U.S. Capitol Police arrested more than a dozen activists three hours before the March for Life for blocking the street in front of HHS's Washington, D.C., headquarters to protest the administration for not reinstating the in-person dispensing requirement for mifepristone, which the prior administration removed. It ends fetal life by blocking progesterone receptors in the uterus.

They included Operation Rescue founder Randall Terry and Progressive Anti-Abortion Uprising founder Terrisa Bukovinac – both former presidential candidates – and several activists pardoned by President Trump after Freedom of Access to Clinic Entrances Act convictions, including Joan Andrews Bell, Herb Geraghty and Will Goodman, PAAU said.

Another arrestee, Let Them Live founder Nathan Berning, showed Just the News his $50 citation for "crowding, obstructing, or incommoding" under D.C'.s "post and forfeit" process. PAAU named 16 in all who were arrested, all but one of whom posted and forfeited, according to News2Share editor in chief Ford Fischer.

One of the surprising faces at the protest was Marjorie Dannenfelser, president of Susan B. Anthony Pro-Life America, which does not engage in civil disobedience like the other groups. (She left for another commitment before the blockade, an SBA spokesperson said.)

SBA pledged to spend $80 million to elect pro-life candidates in the midterms and has turned its ire on the administration in recent months, even faulting Vice President JD Vance for inaction on mifepristone right after he spoke at the March for Life. PAAU noted Vance told NBC News in the 2024 campaign he agrees with Trump that mifepristone should remain "accessible.

Medication abortions comprise more than three in five terminations, up from a bare majority when the Supreme Court ended federal abortion rights in Dobbs in 2022, according to the Guttmacher Institute's 2024 estimates. Total abortions have risen nearly 200,000 a year in the same period, according to Society of Family Planning estimates.

Leading pro-life groups generally accept the accuracy of both abortion rights groups' estimates, and some lashed out at the second Trump administration for enabling the rise by leaving a decade of loosened regulations in place and making even more pills available.

The Obama administration expanded mifepristone's usage window to 10 weeks, let non-physicians prescribe it and removed non-fatal adverse event reporting rules. President Biden's Food and Drug Administration suspended in-person prescribing requirements due to COVID-19, then made the change permanent, enabling pills by mail.

Trump FDA Commissioner Marty Makary angered some GOP senators by approving a generic form of mifepristone after Kennedy promised a safety review months earlier. SBA soon demanded Makary's firing for allegedly slow-walking that review.

The Environmental Protection Agency is reportedly moving in the opposition direction, with senior officials talking to congressional Republicans about overcoming EPA career staff disinterest in studying the possible health risks from mifepristone-tainted fetal tissue entering municipal wastewater systems, according to The Washington Stand.

Sen. Patty Murray, D-Wash., referred to such contamination concerns as an "absurd lie" peddled by pro-life groups to stop women from getting abortions, in a recent committee hearing on the danger of lax regulation around mifepristone.

Soon after Vance asked March for Life attendees to compare 2026 to "where the fight for life stood just one decade ago," SBA said it's not a favorable comparison and blamed "the inaction of the Trump-Vance administration" for rising abortions. (Vance won Students for Life of America's new straw poll for top 2028 GOP contender.)

"The clearest measure of whether the pro-life movement is winning or losing is the number of abortions occurring each year," and they've gone up 30% since 2016 despite "the indispensable role President Trump played in the overturning of Roe" and the administration's position that states should decide their own abortion laws, SBA said.

It alluded to a recent Charlotte Lozier Institute report alleging a flood of abortion pills from abroad that followed the removal of in-person prescribing requirements. 

"Women are also paying the price, with horrifying cases of abuse and coercion emerging – including in Vice President Vance’s home state of Ohio," SBA said.