Like you, we’re working in a new environment and under unprecedented circumstances. Out of an abundance of caution and care for our community, we’re canceling the Fund-a-thon dance party we were planning to hold this spring. We would have loved to gather and dance with you! Our annual fund-a-thon event is our main fundraiser of the year -- for two years in a row we held a board game-a-thon that raised thousands of dollars toward our work. This year we will be conducting an online-only fundraiser, and we hope we will have your support.
The reality is that the people who contact TASC are going to need more financial support than ever. The same people losing their jobs and walking into empty grocery stores are faced with even harder decisions to figure out how get to the abortion they want and need. We will continue to raise and distribute money for abortion access, because funding abortion is mutual aid. We will also continue our practical support work to help people find transportation to and from appointments, deliver free pregnancy tests and emergency contraception, as well as our broader work of informational and emotional support. For our practical support work in particular, this means creating some new protocols that will help keep our doulas and our clients safe when giving rides and delivering supplies, and we are working swiftly to make these changes in how we work.
People will be experiencing more barriers to abortion access than ever before. We also have our eye on how abortion access could dwindle in the face of clinic workers and community health providers being on the front lines of a pandemic, with a higher risk of getting sick, or faced with the necessity of needing to close at this time. People will have more expensive abortions if they need extra time to gather financial and logistical support, and they will likely need to travel farther to get their abortions and experience travel barriers we’ve never before faced. People contacting us are more likely to not have paid sick time off. They’re already parenting, and may have the new expense of finding childcare or taking time off work to be with their children as their schools close. Abortion needs rise in the face of crisis, and unfortunately they do not pause as we figure out how to react as a society.
We do know your resources may be directed to your personal financial situation at this tenuous time. You may also be sending what you have to other mutual aid and community care organizations locally. We understand if your priorities and capacity may have shifted from the beginning of this campaign, and we are still grateful to be in community with you, no matter what you have to offer at this moment. Click here to visit our online fundraising page.
We commit to being in contact with you to provide those details as they develop. We’ll need each other more than ever in the upcoming months. You make us more hopeful; we’re proud to be in community with you.
