The National Institutes of Health (NIH) granted $3.2 million in federal funds to the University of Pittsburgh (Pitt) to achieve its goal of becoming a fetal tissue collection site that could quickly harvest the organs of full-term aborted babies, according to documents obtained as part of a Freedom of Information Act (FOIA) lawsuit.

Judicial Watch and the Center for Medical Progress (CMP) announced Tuesday the receipt of 252 pages of documents from the U.S. Department of Health and Human Services (HHS), which oversees NIH, the nation’s medical research agency.

According to a press release by Judicial Watch, which represents CMP in its lawsuit against HHS, the documents reveal the taxpayer funds were spent on Pitt’s quest to become a “Tissue Hub,” for the harvesting of tissue and organs of aborted babies of 6-42 weeks gestation.

“The NIH grant application for just one of Pitt’s numerous experiments with aborted infants reads like an episode of American Horror Story,” said CMP project lead David Daleiden about the documents obtained via the FOIA request.

Visitors look at a human fetuses on display at the Museum of the Brain. (EITAN ABRAMOVICH/AFP via Getty Images)

Daleiden, who conducted undercover investigations of Planned Parenthood’s alleged fetal tissue trafficking with biomedical procurement companies, elaborated:

Infants in the womb, some old enough to be viable, are being aborted alive and killed for organ harvesting, in order to bring in millions of dollars in taxpayer funding for Pitt and the Planned Parenthood abortion business it supports. People are outraged by such disregard for the lives of the vulnerable. Law enforcement and public officials should act immediately to bring the next Kermit Gosnell to justice under the law.

In May, CMP released a video that alleged NIH uses taxpayer funds to sponsor experimentation at Pitt on aborted babies obtained from a local Planned Parenthood facility.

Judicial Watch noted the current documents revealed Pitt’s goal was to use the taxpayer grant funds to:

Develop a pipeline to the acquisition, quality control and distribution of human genitourinary [urinary and genital organs and functions] samples obtained throughout development (6-42 weeks gestation). … [and] generate an ongoing resource to distribute fresh developmental human genitourinary samples from various stages (6-42 weeks) to the GUDMAP [GenitoUrinary Development Molecular Anatomy Project] Atlas projects.

Pitt’s proposal also indicated the school asserted it had been “collecting fetal tissue for over 10 years … includ[ing] liver, heart, gonads, legs, brain, genitourinary tissues including kidneys, ureters and bladders,” Judicial Watch reported, adding the university said in 2015 it had already “disbursed over 300 fresh samples collected from 77 cases,” and envisioned its collections “can be significantly ramped up as material could have been accrued from as many as 725 cases last year.”

The documents also reveal, stated Judicial Watch, that Pitt records the “warm ischemic time on our samples and take steps to keep it at a minimum to ensure the highest quality biological specimens.”

“Pitt’s statement suggests the time between the abortion and collection is minimal,” Judicial Watch explained, adding the university also included a “racial target for harvesting of human fetal parts.”

“Of its planned aborted ‘subjects’ Pitt desired 50% to be minority fetuses,” the legal watchdog group said. “The proposal suggests that the ‘subjects’ be diverse because Pittsburgh is diverse, the U.S. Census Bureau shows the city of Pittsburgh is close to 70% white.”

In its grant application proposal, Pitt also gave a target goal of having “available a minimum of 5 cases (tissues and if possible other biologicals) per week of gestational age for ages 6-42 weeks.”

According to Judicial Watch, the documents show NIH had already granted Pitt at least $2.7 million for its human fetal tissue harvesting activities.

“These documents show taxpayer money is being used to turn the University of Pittsburgh [into] a one-stop human fetal tissue shop – from procuring the tissue from elective abortions, ‘subdividing’ the human remains, to distributing and shipping the harvested tissue,” said Judicial Watch President Tom Fitton.