HHS Prioritized Erectile Dysfunction Over the Lives of Women and Infants

I am writing to demand immediate congressional oversight and the emergency restoration of public health funding stripped by the Department of Health and Human Services. This month, HHS’s Office of Minority Health terminated 16 grants worth $38 million over four years, several of which funded maternal and infant mortality reduction, postpartum home visits, and cancer screenings. Termination letters told grantees that future funding must instead advance "reducing overmedicalization" by addressing the "root causes of infertility," specifically naming low sperm count, low testosterone, and erectile dysfunction. Rep. Diana DeGette, ranking member of the House Energy and Commerce health subcommittee, wrote to HHS that it is "shocking for the agency to prioritize erectile dysfunction over the health and wellbeing of infants and new mothers." This follows a broader pattern. Over the summer, HHS terminated 53 Teen Pregnancy Prevention Program grants, redirecting funding toward abstinence-only curricula and natural cycle-tracking rather than evidence-based care. The evidence-based programs being defunded are the precise reason the U.S. teen birth rate fell 72% between 2007 and 2023. Decades of public health research show that abstinence-only programs fail: they do not delay sexual activity, but they consistently lead to higher rates of unintended teen pregnancy and STI transmission. Forcing young women into unintended early pregnancies fundamentally alters their futures—sharply reducing high school and college completion, curbing their economic independence, and trapping young mothers and their children in multi-generational financial instability. On August 19, a federal judge partially blocked HHS from applying these ideological criteria after finding part of the overhaul unlawful. The contradiction is stark: an administration calling for higher birth rates is simultaneously defunding the maternal mortality prevention, postpartum care, and infant survival programs that keep pregnant women and newborns alive, while redirecting funds toward sperm counts and erectile dysfunction. The United States already has the highest maternal mortality rate among wealthy nations. Choosing not to fund programs that address infant and maternal survival while investing in birth rate initiatives does not describe a policy protecting life. It describes a policy controlling reproduction while abandoning responsibility for its consequences. As your constituent, I urge you to take three immediate actions: 1. CONVENE EMERGENCY OVERSIGHT HEARINGS: Initiate formal committee inquiries in the House Energy & Commerce and Senate HELP Committees into HHS’s termination and repurposing of congressionally appropriated public health grants. 2. PROTECT APPROPRIATED PUBLIC HEALTH FUNDS: Use the appropriations process to legally protect and mandate funding for maternal mortality reduction, postpartum care, and evidence-based family planning, closing loopholes that allow executive agencies to redirect funds to unauthorized priorities. 3. REJECT IDEOLOGICAL, UNSCIENTIFIC FUNDING MANDATES: Statutorily prohibit HHS from conditioning federal public health grants on abstinence mandates, fertility-tracking requirements, or other criteria not authorized by underlying law. Mothers and infants are dying at rates higher than in any other wealthy nation. Protect the funding that addresses that crisis, and stop treating their survival as secondary to an ideological agenda.