There Is No Human Right to an Abortion

The next are remarks as ready by Division of Well being and Human Providers Deputy Secretary Jim O’Neill to the March for Life Motion Breakfast on Jan. 23.

Thanks for the invitation to be with you right here at the moment, and on your passionate dedication to this noble trigger. 

The March for Life brings collectively People who care deeply about human dignity, moral medication, and the tasks that include scientific and governmental energy. I’d like to make use of my time talking with you at the moment to elucidate how public coverage can replicate these values—clearly, fastidiously, and faithfully—whereas upholding the dignity of human life. 

At HHS, we’re centered on aligning federal well being coverage with a easy precept: science ought to serve individuals, not the opposite method round. That precept guides our actions in biomedical analysis, international engagement, pediatric care, and organ procurement. 

This week, the Nationwide Institutes of Well being notified scientists and stakeholders that NIH funds could not be used for analysis involving human fetal tissue obtained from elective abortions. The coverage applies to analysis happening inside NIH, and to NIH-supported analysis at outdoors laboratories, together with new grant awards, renewals, and ongoing initiatives that depend on such tissue. 

As well as, HHS plans Secretary [Robert F.] Kennedy issued an announcement to extending the NIH fetal tissue prohibition throughout all HHS working divisions. The motion would apply constant restrictions to grants, contracts, and applications administered throughout the Division. 

NIH can be looking for public enter on whether or not to droop acceptance of recent human embryonic stem cell strains into the NIH registry. Advances in science could have made embryonic stem cells pointless. The request for data will assist inform a possible phaseout of reliance on embryonic stem cells whereas encouraging the usage of various analysis strategies. NIH is asking for public touch upon this situation, and I invite you to deliver your passionate voices to this necessary dialog. 

That is about modernizing science. It’s about directing taxpayer-funded analysis towards strategies that replicate each innovation and respect for human life. And it’s about ensuring moral guardrails hold tempo with scientific progress. 

HHS has additionally realigned with the Geneva Consensus Declaration. As soon as once more, underneath the second Trump administration, america is linking arms with international allies who share the assumption that each human life has inherent dignity, nations have a sovereign proper to set their very own well being insurance policies freed from worldwide coercion by entities such because the World Well being Group, and there’s NO. HUMAN. RIGHT. TO. ABORTION. 

In contrast to the WHO, america and our companions within the Geneva Consensus Declaration don’t search to redefine human rights; we affirm them. 

In international well being, readability issues. When worldwide establishments blur strains between care and coercion, or between well being help and political strain, belief erodes. By realigning with the Geneva Consensus, america is signaling that we are going to help ladies and households by well being programs that respect life, tradition, and regulation. 

HHS can be affirming human dignity in our method to sex-rejecting procedures for minors. 

Males are males; males can by no means develop into ladies. Girls are ladies; ladies can by no means develop into males. 

This easy fact is denied by the Left, they usually preach their false gospel that intercourse could be modified to probably the most harmless and weak in society: our youngsters. 

A report issued final yr by HHS bolstered by a whole lot of pages of peer critiques confirmed that sex-rejecting procedures for minors don’t enhance lives in any measurable method. HHS stopped recognizing transgender procedures for minors as sound science, and final month we introduced that we’d be pulling the plug on all federal funding for hospitals that proceed to carry out these barbaric procedures. Youth wrestling with gender dysphoria deserve love and compassion, not a lifetime of off-label prescribed drugs, puberty blockers, cross-sex hormones, and irreversible medical procedures they later remorse as adults. 

Affirming human dignity means recognizing that kids should not experimental topics, and that their futures shouldn’t be formed by strain, ideology, or myopic medical selections. It additionally means guaranteeing that psychological well being help, counseling, and family-centered care stay central to therapy. 

Individually, our Workplace of Refugee Resettlement plans to revise the Unaccompanied Youngsters Program Foundational Rule to deal with how abortion companies are facilitated or funded for unaccompanied alien minors. The revision might finally restrict federal involvement in abortion for minors in authorities custody, notably weak kids underneath federal care.  

Our focus is simple: shield kids from hurt, help households with sincere data, and be certain that medication adheres to its first obligation: do no hurt. 

HHS can be reforming the nation’s organ procurement system. Organ donation saves lives, however the system that helps it should earn—and hold—the general public’s belief. 

Within the previous a number of months, HHS has superior reforms to enhance oversight, transparency, and efficiency throughout organ procurement organizations. These reforms purpose to make sure that each potential donation is dealt with with solemn care, that outcomes are measured actually, and that sufferers ready for transplants are handled with urgency and respect. 

That is coverage based mostly on honoring donors and their households—and it’s about ensuring {that a} system constructed on generosity operates with integrity. 

Throughout all of these areas—analysis ethics, international engagement, pediatric care, and organ procurement—there’s a widespread thread: respect for the worth of human dignity and the divine price present in each particular person, previous or younger, male or feminine, born or unborn. 

The professional-life motion has lengthy argued that respect for all times should be mirrored in establishments, not simply beliefs. That argument resonates as a result of it speaks to a broader concern many People share: that programs have drifted away from their ethical foundations. Reforming them shouldn’t be about turning again the clock; it’s about making use of trendy instruments to timeless ideas. 

Within the Trump administration, HHS is dedicated to doing our work transparently, utilizing gold-standard science, rooted in ethical objectivity. 

Thanks on your advocacy, on your engagement, and for holding establishments to account. I look ahead to persevering with this work collectively. 

Thanks.