The right to choose
Meet Merle Hoffman, a 76 year old healthcare pioneer in New York and founder of Choices Women’s Medical Centre, one of the first abortion clinics in the country. For over half a century, she has led a global crusade to establish women’s healthcare and fight for their reproductive rights.
Merle was born in Philadelphia and raised in New York City as an only child, with ambitions of becoming a concert pianist. After studying in Paris, she returned to New York disillusioned by the hermetic life of a classical musician and settled on graduate school in psychology. Merle worked three jobs to support herself, one of which was in the office of a progressive doctor, who, when abortion was legalised in New York in 1970, opened a clinic in Flushing and asked her to run it.
The opportunity was not an obvious career choice, but it was the clinic’s first patient who ignited Merle’s calling. “Her name was Helen, and she was from New Jersey. She was white, Catholic, married with three children and just couldn’t afford another.” Merle held Helen’s hand during the abortion and stayed with her in the recovery room, where it dawned on her how much these women needed emotional support in addition to the physical procedure. With no existing protocols for counselling post-abortion, Merle set out to create her own.
In 1971, Merle founded the Flushing Women’s Medical Centre, one of the first health facilities in the country to specialise in abortion services and support. Leaving no detail of the patient experience to chance, Merle reimagined every touch point from recovery counselling to how the receptionist answered the phone. As the clinic slowly expanded its operations, Merle expanded her mission.
In the early seventies, there was no such thing as ‘women’s health’. Although women were the instigators of doctor’s appointments and check-ups for their family there was no discipline around the reality of women’s cycles. In response to standard medical practices of the day, Merle developed a philosophy of ‘patient power’ to ensure women became informed consumers of healthcare through education and acess to correct, unbiased information.
In 1975, Merle initiated New York’s first Women’s Health Forum and in the following decades transformed her small medical centre into CHOICES, one of America’s largest and most comprehensive women's medical facilities, offering full reproductive health from obstetrics and gynaecology to primary care.
Over her 50 year mission Merle has revolutionised the rights of breast cancer patients and established CHOICES East, the first feminist outpatient medical centre in Russia. Her activism was sparked the moment she held the hand of that first patient, and continues to be fuelled by each and every woman she serves.
“I am certain all the women who have had abortions over the centuries were not lost souls; and that the war to stop abortions will not end in my lifetime. I continue my work with a deep knowledge that I have been given the gift to be part of this great struggle for women’s freedom.”
