A Project of JFAVC (updated Q2 2024)
Welcome to the most powerful suite of pro-choice tools available to activists in the Central Coast. These tools were developed through the crowdsourced contributions of countless community members across the region.
The result is the best clearinghouse of local pro-choice knowledge available to the community, driven by contributions from community members with professional experience ranging from UC Santa Barbara to Planned Parenthood Central Coast. Here are Toolkit components available to local activists so far…
Abortion Providers in the Central Coast
Our community maintains the most accurate, localized whitelist of vetted abortion providers ever developed for the Central Coast. This whitelist enables side-by-side comparisons of both clinic services and geographic accessibility, based on proximity to major colleges and universities.
The Central Coast is home to almost 2.5 million residents – yet only six abortion providers serve the entire region, or one provider for every 400,000 residents. Finding a provider is even tougher when “fake clinics” outnumber legitimate providers by a two-to-one margin.
About Fake Clinics, AKA Crisis Pregnancy Centers
In our region of California, CPCs outnumber abortion providers two-to-one. That means training our community to recognize and report these CPCs is essential to not only countering the sources of local anti-choice disinformation, but to saving people’s lives.
This Toolkit component provides insights and analytics into the Central Coast’s “crisis pregnancy centers”, or CPCs. It also offers a localized checklist of red flags you can use to evaluate if you’ve discovered a CPC operating covertly in your own community.
The CPC Watchlist for the Central Coast
“Secrecy is important for [CPCs] to function,” says Director Shakouri of ReproAction.org. “They don’t want their name or their CPCs to be associated with them.” That’s why our community created this Watchlist: to expose CPC influence across the Central Coast.
The Watchlist provides the most accurate, localized and authoritative data on CPC proliferation in our region. It offers insights ranging from which youth populations these CPCs target, to which legitimate clinics these CPCs impersonate. The goal of the Watchlist: to save lives.
How Community Research Exposed CPCs
By operating from the shadows, CPCs serve as proliferators of “pro-life” disinformation in the community. Not only do they mislead on abortion, birth control and even how women’s bodies work, but 42% of CPCs in the Central Coast are linked with religious groups that originated these myths.
This component explores the research methods we use to expose such groups, and the CPCs they deploy to spread anti-choice falsehoods to those who accidentally visit CPCs. “Sunlight is the best disinfectant” when it comes to exposing anti-choice fraud.
The LGBT-Friendly Therapists of the Central Coast
Women aren’t alone in facing threats to their bodily autonomy in a post-Dobbs world. The LGBT community has long been a target of the anti-choice movement’s attempts to strip the community of access to lifesaving healthcare and services – including gender-affirming mental healthcare.
This Toolkit component not only highlights LGBT-friendly therapists who are local to the Central Coast, but also the community research strategies we developed to identify these therapists. Whether you’re a patient seeking services or an activist seeking resources, this Toolkit has what you need.