The discovery was made after the conservative watchdog group received 676 pages of records as part of a March 2019 Freedom of Information Act (FOIA) lawsuit, which revealed that NIH paid at least $18,100 between December 2016 and August 2018 to Alameda-based Advanced Bioscience Resources (ABR) for at least 26 purchases of livers and thymuses from fetuses aborted in their second trimester. The orders were placed by Dr. Kim Hasenkrug, senior investigator at the NIH lab in Hamilton, Montana.

Of note, ABR has been the subject of criminal referrals from House and Senate committees investigating whether Planned Parenthood or any other group was illegally profiting from aborted babies.