Merle Hoffman is Founder/President of Choices Women’s Medical and Mental Health Center, Long Island City, NY, est. 1971 as one of the first ambulatory abortion centers; co-founder of the National Abortion Federation (NAF) and founder of the NY Pro-Choice Coalition; publisher/editor-in-chief of “On the Issues: the Progressive Women’s Quarterly”.
What We Are Fighting For
By Merle Hoffman
I remember so well the first patient that came to Choices Women’s Medical Center.
It was 1971 when New York was one of only seven states that had repealed their abortion restrictions prior to the Supreme Court legalizing abortion in 1973 with Roe V. Wade. This woman was white, married in her early 20’s and she came from New Jersey because abortion was still illegal in that state. Like someone from the underground railroad during the Civil War, she had to cross a border to exercise her rights-to be a full human being and a participating citizen of this country. I do not remember her face. I do remember her fear, her need, her pain, her strength, her vulnerability and her hand. Her hand that became for me in that moment in time without my knowing, the guiding force of my life”
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What would I tell her now- so many years later. That her daughter would very possibly have to do the same thing? That right here – right now – 33 years after Roe V. Wade our wombs remain battlefields, and we are all soldiers (willing or not) in this generational and cosmic power struggle against a movement that has been extraordinarily successful in waging a guerilla campaign against legal abortion on multiple fronts.
From harassing patients in front of clinics, to marginalizing and killing doctors and clinic workers, to insuring that 87% of counties in this country have no abortion providers, to bombs, economic pressures, evictions, guerilla malpractice suits, legislation, to parental consent and waiting periods and the winning of hearts and minds, anti-choice forces have managed to create a world where it is possible once again for any of us or our daughters to have to cross a border to exercise their fundamental rights.
I would have to tell her that we have gained the right of reproductive freedom constitutionally through Roe, but to quote Rousseau, “liberty may be gained but never recovered,” and we are at risk of losing ours. Roe V. Wade was the first genuine expression of feminist values in the collective public consciousness. With the legalization of abortion, words became flesh and abstract moral theological ethical and philosophical principals transformed into millions of women making the decision whether or not to bring a pregnancy to term.
It is not politics but necessity that drives women’s choices and forms the political and theoretical foundation of the right to choose.
Any woman having an abortion is political in the deepest sense of the world. Their feminism is forged in the fires of experience. How do we translate that biological imperative into a political one?
How to we think about abortion and fight for women to gain the right to safe legal abortion as a fundamental human and civil right? Theorizing between bullets is difficult-but Progressives must understand that in order to learn the art of this war we must revisit the enemy, the battlefield and ourselves.
The act of abortion and choice is power- it is women at their most powerful exercising the right of fetal existence- defining what grows within them as a welcome event or an overwhelming assault.
This power of life and death is traditionally held by the male establishment and codified in both military and common law. Historically, it is men who decide who lives and who dies and for what reason- not women. That is why abortion, which is the termination of potential life, is so strongly opposed.
We must create a true national collectivity – as “women.” One in which Choice and Reproductive freedom are the theory and abortion is the practice.
We are challenged to create a transcendent class where we would identify with all women struggling to make choices and defend them rather then resist that power through guilt and denial.
Can we really have abortion without apology?
Will all the women who have had abortions say so publicly and stand for that choice with their lovers, husbands and friends?
In 1989 at the first organized pro-choice civil disobedience action where nine people were arrested- I held up a huge coat hanger signifying the future for American women if Cardinal O’Conner continued to support Randall Terry and Operation Rescue. We placed a large parchment on the doors of St. Patrick’s Cathedral in Manhattan, a la Martin Luther at Wittenberg.
We affirmed these principles:
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Women are full moral agents with the right and ability to choose when and whether or not they will be mothers.
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Abortion is a choice made by each woman individually for profound personal reasons that no man or state should judge.
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The right to make reproductive choices is women’s legacy throughout history and belongs to every woman regardless of age, class religion or sexual preference.
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Abortion is a life affirming act chosen within the context of women’s realities, women’s lives and women’s sexuality.
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Abortion is often the most moral choice in a world that frequently denies health care, housing, education and economic survival.
Two weeks after their murders in Brookline, Massachusetts I went down there to see where the Planned Parenthood clinic workers Shannon Lowny and Leanne Nichols were gunned down.
I made them a promise on that day and I make again today, that yes we must mourn, but in the words of the immortal Emma Goldman: Don’t mourn- ORANIZE!
Yes-this is the banner that we must march under – our banner, and the banner women must struggle, fight and perhaps die for.