On his third day in office, President Clinton lifted the ban on the use of federal funds for the transplantation of tissue from induced abortions into humans. The ban was first imposed in 1988 after the National Institutes of Health voluntarily requested government approval for an experiment on Parkinson's disease. In subsequent years, the Secretary of Health and Human Services at the time, Dr. Louis Sullivan, decided to continue the ban against the advice of panels of experts he convened to deliberate on the matter. While clinical studies were banned, basic scientific research that used tissue from induced abortions continued, although much of it was severely hampered.
Fetal tissue is exceptionally well suited to bolster or replace compromised human tissues.
Not only does fetal tissue grow quickly, but it is also much less likely to trigger an immune response in the recipient. Some also have hope that fetal tissue research might provide a way of renewing the immune system of AIDS patients. Opponents of fetal tissue transplantation fear that it would encourage increased abortion rates. Many believe that there is a real risk of trivializing non-viable human life by making it into a commodity. They wonder where the line will be drawn, and some suggest that only spontaneously aborted fetuses be used as a tissue source.