1. United States
2. Mich.
3. Letter

Priorities Check: Dying Moms Don't Need ED Pills The Department of Health and Human Services recently canceled 16 vital Office of Minority Health grants—totaling $38 million—diverting critical resources away from infant mortality prevention and postpartum care. The new agenda? Pivoting taxpayer dollars toward addressing erectile dysfunction and promoting physical exercise. Let me be clear: women constitute over half of the population. Stripping funding from life-saving postpartum home visits, infant fatality prevention, and hypertension monitoring to subsidize treatments for male sexual dysfunction is an unacceptable misuse of public health priorities. When states face soaring maternal mortality rates, pulling the plug on basic healthcare for mothers and newborns to focus on men's performance issues is not just policy failure—it is blatant negligence. Living through pregnancy and childbirth should take precedence over soft outcomes. Halt these arbitrary grant cancellations; it is a matter of basic human survival for mothers and infants across this nation. I urge you to intervene immediately: compel HHS to halt these funding cancellations and fully restore support for maternal and infant health programs. Women’s lives are not disposable.