We often hear about domestic violence shelters on television—usually on programs like Law and Order: Special Victims Unit—and we think, well, there’s where people can go if they’re getting beat up by their partner. Many of us are lucky enough to not have had experiences with such things—and lucky enough to not have needed them—so we don’t really see what goes on in a typical shelter, nor how a person can get help from one. While one of the things I want to do before I die is to work for or with a women’s safe house, I honestly have no idea how they operate other than what I’ve garnered from television and Stephen King’s Rose Madder, my absolute favorite novel.

That said, I know how important they must be, since more than 1,000 women die every year from abuse at the hands of a partner. Millions more are abused, escaping death—often very narrowly—but still living with physical and emotional scars. Three to four million kids see domestic violence in their homes, which only serves to scare them, scar them, and enable the violent cycle to continue. In fact, the problem is so widespread that the National Organization for Women is calling it an epidemic.

That’s why they are campaigning for the Family Violence Prevention Services Act (FVPSA), a bill that helped provide services like counseling, hotline help, school prevention projects, and other vital activities to help curb the country’s rampant epidemic of domestic violence. Without this crucial bill and the funding it provides, over 2,000 shelters will lose their funding—meaning that outreach activities, support and job training for domestic violence survivors, parenting skills classes, and many other services will be lost to the people who need them most.

We deemed the bill important enough to pass in the 1980s as part of the Child Abuse Amendment, and again in 1994 and 2003.  Now that it’s up again for renewal, we must make sure that our elected officials vote in favor of the bill and ensure its passing. Doing so will save lives of both abused adults as well as children.

Please write to your representative today asking him or her to support this important legislation. It is absolutely critical that this bill be passed to ensure that families who need support and a way out of the cycle of violence are given it as soon as possible.