TOLEDO, Ohio — A Toledo non-profit which provides funding for abortion services for low-income women is crying foul after a t-shirt design for a local screen-printing shop's fundraising campaign was turned down.
The Here for Good campaign is a fundraiser/promotion put on by Jūpmode each year in which $10 is donated to a local small business when a customer buys one of that businesses’ custom designed t-shirts from Jūpmode.
In a Facebook post on Thursday, the Aggie Fund revealed the design of a shirt they submitted for the fundraiser: a play on the famous ‘You will do better in TOLEDO’ sign but with the text ‘You will Fund abortion in TOLEDO”.
The company says they were told by Jūpmode that their design wouldn’t be allowed unless it was “toned down”.
On Saturday, Kristin Hady with the Aggie Fund told WTOL 11 that the non-profit has participated in the Here for Good fundraiser in the past and has never backed away from promoting their mission.
“This is especially frustrating to us to literally be told to tone it down. That’s telling us to tone down what we do. That’s telling us to lessen ourselves. That’s telling us to minimize ourselves,” said Hady. “Frankly it’s letting anti-abortion organizations, people, and opinions dictate our messaging, which is not something we are ever willing to compromise on.”
Jūpmode responded to the Aggie Fund’s Facebook post on Thursday on their own Facebook page, writing:
“The Agnes Reynolds Fund has been part of the Here For Good campaign for the last couple of years and was a welcomed partner this year as well. We hoped the conversations could have been extended to find a compromise regarding their requested design. Our goal for the Here for Good campaign is to support the community and we greatly respect the work of the Agnes Reynolds Fund. We do not intend to publicly comment further.”
It’s unclear exactly what Jūpmode found objectionable about the design.
The Aggie Fund’s t-shirt design for last year’s Here for Good fundraiser used similar language, reading ‘I FUND ABORTIONS’ along with the organization’s logo.
The Aggie Fund was named after Agnes Reynolds Jackson, who was one of the founders of the Fair Housing Center of Toledo in 1975.
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