In this article, Paula Reid discusses the impacts that budget cuts may have on the Women, Infants, and Children Supplemental Nutrition Program or WIC. This program provides breast feeding counseling and monthly food vouchers to new mothers. Almost 60 % of newborns in the US are enrolled in WIC. If Congress does not act, $600,000 will be cut. This could affect hundreds of thousands of mothers around the nation, such as 21 year old Cierra Kelley. When she had issues getting her son to breastfeed, the program provided her the counseling to get him healthy again. As WIC supervisor Heather Miranda explains, this program is beneficial to many of the individuals who it reaches. She recalls instances where mothers have had to stop breast feeding, because they could not afford to feed themselves without the program. As Miranda concludes ” It would make me incredibly sad if we balanced the budget on the backs of infants women and children”
Shannon