This Mother’s Day, support nutrition for infants and moms | Opinion
This Mother’s Day, to truly honors mothers, we should support nutrition for all infants and their moms. There could be nothing more important to moms — and more basic to society — than to ensure all babies get the chance to grow up healthy.
Sadly, for the second year in a row, the Trump administration has proposed budget cuts to the Women, Infants, and Children (WIC) program, which provides nutritious foods to impoverished mothers so they can feed their kids.
American mothers need help
According to the Food Research and Action Center: “Despite the administration professing a commitment to making America healthy, this budget proposal would cut critical nutrition service for moms, babies and children, dramatically slashing the benefit that participants in the Special Supplemental Nutrition Program for Women, Infants, and Children receive to purchase fruits and vegetables.”
The Center on Budget and Policy Priorities warns that the proposed cuts would take away WIC fruit and vegetable benefits from 5.4 million parents and young children. With high food prices, it is even more important to help impoverished mothers feed themselves and their babies.
The safety net of WIC is crucial for a baby’s development. This is a time to be investing in WIC, not pulling funds.
With tons of U.S. resources poured into wars and weapons, it’s very discouraging to see cuts in infant feeding programs like WIC. We need to do better.
When he signed the National School Lunch Act on June 4, 1946, President Harry Truman said: “No nation is any healthier than its children.” We must make sure our youngest generation has sufficient access to food and nutrition, and nutrition programs need the support of the American people.
Global need for nutritional support
While supporting mothers and infants is critical to our domestic policy, it is also imperative to our foreign policy. In fact, our most successful peace adventure — the reconstruction after World War II — was possible because we supported child nutrition programs for war-torn nations.
Sadly, child nutrition programs don’t often get the foreign policy attention they deserve. As President Dwight D. Eisenhower once said, “The world cups its ear to hear the rattling of rockets. It listens less closely to the sounds of peace and well-being which emanate from the slow but steady improvement in world health and nutrition.”
Peace through strength means more than just military might. It also means the saving of starving children and the building of healthy generations for all nations.
In addition to WIC, we should also support increased funding for the Food for Peace program, an international food assistance program, which was started by Eisenhower. Food for Peace includes infant nutrition and school meals. Unfortunately, however, the Trump administration has proposed eliminating Food for Peace, despite the massive needs globally.
With famine in Sudan, and major hunger emergencies in South Sudan, Gaza, Lebanon, Burkina Faso, Syria, Somalia, Yemen and Congo, we need to be supporting food aid programs. There are children starving to death in these countries and we can do more to help them.
On this Mother’s Day, mothers throughout the world — both here in the U.S. and abroad — need hope that their children can grow up and thrive. They need our compassion. We can help millions of moms and babies through critical, life-saving nutrition support.
William Lambers is an author who partnered with the UN World Food Program on the book “Ending World Hunger.”