Dear Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid and House Majority Leader John Boehner:

I strongly urge both of you to support a truly balanced deficit reduction plan that will avert mandatory budget cuts for vital public health programs, including the Affordable Care Act, the Special Supplemental Nutrition Program for Women, Infants, and Children (WIC), and Title X.

If a bi-partisan compromise cannot be reached and the cuts take effect in March of 2013, WIC will receive an 8.2% cut, or the equivalent of removing 735,000 mothers and young children from the program. WIC currently serves more than half of all infants born in the U.S and elicits support across political, ideological, ethnic, and socio-economic lines. Voters oppose cutting funding for WIC. A bi-partisan national survey of 1,000 likely November 2012 voters indicated nearly 3 in 4 Americans want WIC funding to remain the same or increase, with nearly twice as many favoring an increase as wanting a reduction.

The Affordable Care Act is arguably the greatest advancement for women�s health in a generation. It has already expanded healthcare for 45 million women, including access to reproductive healthcare services and lifesaving cancer screenings. Furthermore, access to affordable health insurance will soon become available for the nearly 13 million women of reproductive age under the law. These landmark advances could be dismantled if cuts are made to the health care law during budget negotiations.

Similarly, the vulnerability of Title X during these historical negotiations is of paramount concern to anyone who cares about the long-term health of women. For millions of women, access to Title X-funded programs makes the difference between access to cancer screenings and birth control or going without.

New mothers and young children need WIC's critical nutrition assistance and healthcare services to assure healthy births, protect mothers and young children against nutrition related diseases, and assure children are ready to learn on entering school. Low-income women of all ages need access to the preventative care services that Title X and the Affordable Care act provide. Cutting funding from these programs in the short-term will result in long-term health and economic consequences for the country that will ultimately lead to increases in the federal deficit.

I urge you to collectively pursue a balanced deficit reduction plan and save these critical public health and human needs programs from damaging cuts.