Lineage Coffee Roasting, based in Orlando, is doing damage control after being accused online of supporting Choices Women's Clinic, a religious nonprofit organization that operates two anti-abortion pregnancy centers in Central Florida — with a third on the way.
Last February, the local specialty coffee roaster supplied coffee for a Choices fundraising event, “Lattes for Life,” meant to promote their work in promoting alternatives to abortion. Choices also named Lineage Coffee as a 2024 corporate sponsor for their annual “Walk for Life” fundraiser in an Instagram Reel published last month.
After a Reddit post blew up this weekend, however, identifying the connection between the nonprofit and coffee roaster, the social media post was promptly deleted and re-uploaded to exclude mention of Lineage Coffee.
Lineage has since apologized for their “unofficial policy” of supporting local groups that ask them for coffee for events, and has denied entering into any agreements with them in 2024.
“Until now, it’s been our unofficial policy to try to respond to as many coffee donation requests as we are able to,” reads a social media post published Monday by Lineage Coffee Roasting. “Our goal in this was to broadly support the local communities around us to grow and flourish.”
Comments are turned off for the post, where Lineage acknowledges in a statement that it was brought to their attention that they had donated coffee to a nonprofit in 2023 that's tied to groups that lobby to restrict abortion access.
The statement did not explicitly identify Choices Women's Clinic by name, which is connected to national anti-abortion groups like Heartbeat International and Care Net.
“We don’t support this and the fracturing effect that followed,” the post from Lineage Coffee continues. “This was not ok and it’s our job to thoroughly vet any organization we support in this way.”
Lineage Coffee Roasting, a decade-old coffee staple in the Orlando area, did not acknowledge in their public statement why they were listed by Choices Women’s Clinic as a corporate sponsor for the nonprofit’s 2024 Walk for Life event, along with local entities like Advent Health for Women, the Crossman & Co. commercial real estate agency and others businesses.
Ryan Wilcox, a co-owner of Lineage Coffee, told Orlando Weekly by email, however, that they could not find any records or requests for coffee donations for the 2024 Walk for Life event.
He also clarified that, beyond contributing coffee to the 2023 Lattes for Life event, they do not have any other agreements nor do they have record of any financial contributions to the nonprofit. “We don't have any ongoing or future relationship with this organization,” said Wilcox.
Owners and Orlando residents Justine and Jarrett Johnson are personally open about attending One Church, a local church affiliated with the Assemblies of God. (In 2021, they led an "Alpha Marriage Course" for One Church, as advertised in this promo video.) Their business messaging, however, does not explicitly mention their personal faith.
Choices Women's Clinic, an religious 501(c)3 nonprofit based in Orlando, is an advocate for abolishing abortion access altogether. Founded in 1983 as “True Life Choice,” the nonprofit today operates two facilities offering free pregnancy tests, free ultrasounds, and “information” about abortion, with one location in downtown Orlando off Colonial Drive and another in Oviedo, near the University of Central Florida.
Crisis pregnancy centers are facilities that often advertise abortion services without actually offering them as an option.
State records show that Choices' facility in Orlando is licensed as a clinical laboratory, but not licensed as a health care clinic, despite advertising free ultrasounds and describing itself as a “medical clinic”. Its location in Oviedo doesn't show up in the state's licensing database at all. Choices lists the names of licensed registered nurses (we checked licensing databases) and licensed sonographers online, but it's unclear which facilities they staff.
Such anti-abortion facilities, also known as pregnancy resource centers, are known for using manipulative, deceptive tactics to convince pregnant people not to obtain an abortion, such as lying about how far along a person is in their pregnancy. They often open up shop near real abortion clinics.
Choices Orlando (choicesorlando.com), a website set up to attract pregnant people, uses health-oriented messaging and says things like “You have options.” Choices Friends (choicesfriends.com), however — meant to solicit donors and more openly stocked with anti-abortion propaganda than Choices Orlando — explicitly boasts that their new, third location in Kissimmee is located a “half-mile” from Planned Parenthood, the city’s only licensed abortion clinic.
That new location is slated to open next month with a stated goal to “CHANGE abortion” in the Orlando area “Until there are ZERO.”
According to Expose Fake Clinics, a campaign of Abortion Access Front, Choices Women’s Clinic is one of over 160 crisis pregnancy centers in Florida, outnumbering actual abortion clinics more than three to one.
Some of these anti-abortion centers (Choices not included) even receive state funding through Florida’s “alternatives to abortion” program, established by Gov. Jeb Bush's administration in 2005. That program, operated by the Florida Pregnancy Care Network nonprofit and loosely overseen by the Florida Agency for Health Care Administration, received a five-fold funding increase last year.
Do you work at Lineage Coffee and have thoughts about your employer's relationship to Choices? We want to hear from you (and can protect your identity). Contact reporter McKenna Schueler at [email protected].
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