Two weeks ago, The Times ran a photograph of two Ethiopian women and a child combing the hills for edible grass. The women resembled stick figures, and the child's body seemed too small to support his head. Chances are they're dead by now: in Bati, where they were, 120 people die every day.

In Abeche, Chad, The Times's Henry Kamm this week encountered swarms of children sifting the dirt of the vast central market for grain and discarded vegetables. Farther south, in Mongo, women broke up termite mounds for the grain the insects store. In Ati, to the north, a girl clutched at her mother's breast; she was 3 years old but weighed only 6 1/2 pounds.

Because of drought, poor land use and overpopulation, these countries and others in sub-Saharan Africa cannot feed their people. And because of the Reagan Administration, there may soon be yet more mouths to feed.

The Administration has refused $17 million in aid to the International Planned Parenthood Federation because less than 1 percent of its total funds (but none of the Federal money) goes toward abortion-related services. Among other projects, that has wiped out the entire infrastructure of family planning services in Ethiopia. Chad was about to get such services; International Planned Parenthood was to set up an affiliate there next year. Now it can't. Planned programs in 17 other African countries have had to be canceled.

Mostly death, then, will go on regulating family size in the world's poor countries. Yes, America is shipping tons of food to today's famine victims - but by denying funds to the federation, it is creating tomorrow's. Surely President Reagan does not want to be responsible for such a tragedy, and he needn't be. Not if he starts his second term by paying more attention to the needs of starving millions, and less to the demands of a minority of ideological zealots.