Lana’e Hernandez with the Choices All Options Pantry in St. Petersburg, Florida. Credit: choicespantry / Instagram
Choices without judgement, without cost. This is what Lana’e Hernandez believes care for pregnant people should look like, and she’s putting her money where her mouth is. Hernandez just opened the first Choices All Options Pantry in St. Petersburg where anyone can go to access free, self-serve supplies for birth control, abortion, full term pregnancy and infant care.
The pantry is located in a hallway at the Museum of Motherhood in the Warehouse Arts District. It can be accessed through a back door which is open to the public from 8 a.m.-8 p.m. seven days a week.
Choices is serious about being judgement-free; you don’t have to walk by a front desk, and the hallway is not heavily-trafficked.
“You can just show up and take what you need from the pantry,” Hernandez told Creative Loafing Tampa Bay. “Nobody’s there asking what you might need it for or how many you need.”
Items stocked in the pantry include: pregnancy and ovulation tests; prenatal vitamins; diapers and rash cream; over-the-counter birth control; nausea remedies; emergency contraceptives; breast pumps; and educational zines and pamphlets to help you access free resources for abortion or continued pregnancy. There are too many items to list here, but Choices’ Instagram page has a video showcasing what’s available to everyone for free.
If you put the Museum of Motherhood into a navigation app, it will take you to the front entrance. To get to the back entrance, turn east onto 7th Avenue S off of 28th Street S—just north of Pinellas Trail. It’s a door right near Daddy Kool Records’ back entrance.
A map showing directions to St. Petersburg’s Choices All Options Pantry. Credit: By Valerie Smith / Open Maps
Hernandez is a case manager at Florida Access Network, an organization unaffiliated with the pantry that helps people access abortions. She initially got involved with Planned Parenthood after the U.S. Supreme Court allowed states to impose harsher restrictions on abortion with its Dobbs v. Jackson ruling. Hernandez’s role has exposed her to a lot of gaps in the care available to pregnant people.
Crisis pregnancy centers advertise free services for pregnant people, but the American College of Obstetricians and Gynecologists says they operate unethically to try to dissuade people from getting abortions. People who seek abortions out-of-state need childcare, but often can’t get it. Government-funded WIC provides food for people who are pregnant or have young children, but it doesn’t pay for diapers, nipple pads or other important care items.
“These things should be free,” Hernandez told CL. “That’s where mutual aid comes in to help bridge that gap and to give the people the things that they should already have access to.” Hernandez credited Tampa Period Pantry organizer Bree Wallace with helping her get the project off the ground through advice and support.
RELATED CONTENT
Up to this point, Hernandez has funded Choices entirely out of her own pocket. With the government shutdown pausing SNAP payments, Hernandez understands that the financial pressure could lead some people to choose between eating and getting pregnancy and infant care supplies. To help cover that gap, she self-funded the pantry so she could deploy it as soon as possible.
Choices is accepting monetary and material donations to keep the pantry stocked, and Hernandez hopes to establish more in the coming months. “I think reproductive healthcare and mutual aid go hand-in-hand,” Hernandez said. “It’s all one big resource that needs to be funded.”
Subscribe to Creative Loafing newsletters.
Follow us: Google News | NewsBreak | Reddit | Instagram | Facebook | BlueSky
This article appears in Nov. 13 – 19, 2025.
Related