Intimate Wars
The Life and Times of the Woman Who Brought Abortion from the Back Alley to the Boardroom
-
- $12.99
-
- $12.99
Publisher Description
A “searingly honest debut memoir” from an activist and award-winning journalist who made a woman’s right to choose her life’s work (Kirkus Reviews).
Merle Hoffman had built a life as a classical pianist and self-made millionaire before her passion for the equality and freedom of girls and women drew her to a bigger cause: protecting a woman’s right to have a safe and legal abortion.
Hoffman became an expert in women’s reproductive healthcare and used her entrepreneurial spirit to build one of the most comprehensive women’s medical centers in the country. In 1971, two years before the Roe v. Wade Supreme Court decision made abortion legal throughout the US, Hoffman founded the New York abortion clinic Choices. As a medical provider, she pioneered “patient power,” encouraging women to participate in their own health care decisions.
Through her singular journey, Hoffman had many loves and even adopted a daughter from Russia, but never wavered in her commitment to fighting on the front lines of the feminist movement.
“From her decision to adopt a child to her love affairs, this is the story of one woman’s quest to live fully. Opinionated, fierce, bold and brash, Intimate Wars chronicles Hoffman’s efforts to improve women’s lives and influence history. She deserves our gratitude.” —Truthout
PUBLISHERS WEEKLY
As director of one of the nation's first ambulatory abortion clinics, activist and journalist Hoffman implemented "Patient Power" to ensure that the staff did not demean women seeking abortions. Characterizing abortion as "often an act of love, and always an act of survival," she eloquently chronicles more than three decades of struggles to keep abortion legal. Although replete with intimate details, such as her erotic teenage attachments to teachers, an affair with the married physician she persuaded to leave his wife for her, and her decision in her 60s to adopt a child, her memoir lacks introspection. Readers will wonder why she is so aggressive, competitive, and self-centered referring to "my clinic," "my counselors," "my staff," and describing how she "imperiously" entered a formal dance with her married lover and "answered for him" when he was asked about his wife's absence. Hoffman's arrogance contrasts sharply with her compassion for patients. Hoffman's lack of self-observation mars the book, but readers will learn much about her drive to recast "reproductive freedom as a positive moral value." 24 b&w photos.
