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ON THE ISSUES MAGAZINE ONLINE is a successor to the print publication, On The Issues Magazine, a progressive, feminist quarterly print publication from 1983 to 1999, both published by Choices Women’s Medical Center, Merle Hoffman, President and CEO, located in Jamaica, Queens, New York. |
THE LOVE OF STRANGERS “Patient #4 in recovery was moved by your work and wants to see you.” When my assistant’s email came through, I was in the middle of a meeting in my office. Excusing myself, I put on the white coat I always keep hanging on the back of my chair and went up to the recovery room. |
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Where the Reality of Abortion Resides: Intimate Wars When I first opened a clinic for women’s abortion care in Flushing, New York in 1971, women finally had access to safe, legal abortions – even before Roe v. Wade decriminalized abortion across the country. New York State had acted to decriminalize abortion in 1970, so we were already a step ahead. Doctors could now treat patients in a respectful environment, away from the back-alley secrecy and lethal dangers. |
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Patient Power – The Reluctant Revolution When I first opened a clinic for women’s abortion care in New York in 1971, women finally had access to safe, legal abortions – even before Roe v. Wade decriminalized abortion across the country. New York State had acted to decriminalize abortion in 1970, so we were already a step ahead. Doctors could now treat patients in a respectful environment, away from the back-alley secrecy and lethal dangers. But this was also an era when doctors, almost all male, were often patronizing and imperialistic. In order to change that power dynamic for the women in our clinic, I realized that the historically accepted roles for doctors and patients also needed a revolution. |
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All Wars Are Intimate Wars All wars are intimate. For women whose bodies have become battlegrounds in the struggle for reproductive freedom, the intimacy is profound. In the U.S. where the rise of the fundamentalist right has resulted in extensive attempts at creative new restrictions on women’s rights to Moscow, where an American style anti-choice movement has emerged, the struggle goes on. The womb is the ultimate theater of war and all women are potential casualties. |
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Feminism Is As Feminism Does All my life there was a kind of disconnect between my internal and external realities. "Funny," people would say, "you don’t look Jewish. Funny, you don’t look like a concert pianist. Funny—you don’t look like a feminist." But I was all of those things and more. And equally today, as we struggle to define a new standard of feminism, appearance, age, dress, and labels are merely detours, diversions. Thought and action are the fault lines that matter. —MORE …….. |
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The Courage of No Children are natural resistance fighters. From the time they realize that they have the agency (if not the power) to push back against parental authority, they begin to use it. They do not discriminate against particular types of authority, but understand organically that all power can, and in some cases must, be resisted. —MORE …….. |
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Selecting The Same Sex There is one place where the definition of gender remains binary – in the womb. When it comes to sonograms, amniocentesis and standard pre-natal testing, there are no nuances. Here, the pronouncement, “It’s a girl,” can translate into fierce and instant parental rejection. The fact is that when the issue is “sex selection abortion,” the same sex is always being selected — female. —MORE …….. |
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On the Murder and Continuing Inspiration of Dr. George Tiller George Tiller was a friend, comrade and associate of mine for over a quarter of a century. I would share time and ideas with him at conferences, refer patients for his services and exchange holiday gifts with his staff. He, like so many abortion providers, was a person of courage, integrity and commitment to women’s reproductive rights. —MORE …….. |
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Higher Ground, Not Common Ground As a person who feels that war should be the strategy of last resort, I still like to read military history. I find myself going back to the wisdom of Sun Tzu who wrote in “The Art of War” in the 6th century BC: “If you know the enemy and know yourself, you need not fear the results of a hundred battles.” —MORE …….. |
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Revolution Lite Oscar Wilde, writing in The Soul of Man Under Socialism, said, “A map of the world that does not include Utopia is not worth glancing at, for it leaves out the one country at which Humanity is always landing.” —MORE …….. |
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Divide, Conquer and Sell Growing up in Philadelphia in the 50s, girls were labeled sluts if they dressed provocatively, let boys “tongue kiss” them or behaved in such a way that crossed the white middle class boundaries that defined appropriate role behavior. Sexual behavior had the power to divide women from themselves, their community and, some would say, even their souls. —MORE …….. |
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Plus ca change Welcome to the May/June 2008 edition of On The Issues Magazine Online, the first full edition of our new Internet publishing venture. Reviving the magazine on the web 25 years after our first release in print and after a nine-year hiatus feels like visiting a very old friend that I haven’t seen for years, one that was so much a part of my life and my expectations for the future. Even though the many changes of time and life happened to both of us, I can still pick up right where I left off as if conversation never really stopped. —MORE …….. |
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Message From the Publisher of On The Issues Magazine Twenty-five years ago I began On the Issues as a newsletter of Choices Women’s Medical Center in an effort to communicate with other health care providers and pro-choice activists. The first issue in 1983 featured pieces about the early days of the AIDS crisis, the newly-named and diagnosed pre-menstrual syndrome and a report on my debate with Jerry Falwell in Detroit. —MORE …….. |
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Replacing PROZAC with PLATO: THE NEW PHILOSOPHICAL COUNSELING Interview with Lou Marinoff —MORE …….. |
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27 Years, but Who’s Counting? Thoughts on yet another Roe v. Wade For the first time, women were in control of patient referrals and clinics, —MORE …….. |
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Poetry Redux I had gone to bed in my habitual way — very late, with some difficulty, —MORE …….. |
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What’s a Feminist to Do? No passionate love letters, no dark night of the soul; just a demand to kiss it — not even to —MORE …….. |
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IRAN: Notes from the Interior You’re going where? The insistent questioning by family and friends reverberated in my head as I —MORE …….. |
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Facing the Dragon: In a world with no more Wests to conquer or empires to build, where risk-taking comes packaged as adventure vacations, what —MORE …….. |
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Warrior Healers of South Africa In March of 1997 I traveled to South Africa, intellectually knowing what to expect, but not expecting what I would feel once I arrived there. —MORE …….. |
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Fatal Denial? The tragic case of Amy Grossberg and Brian Peterson —MORE …….. |
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Trojan Horses
It is a fact that some people find Jesus in the strangest of places — he seems to relish coming in chance epiphanies, catching them unexpected —MORE …….. |
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Happiness and the Feminist Mind Americans are a nation of people who feel supremely entitled to happiness. After all, in the first paragraph of the Declaration of Independence —MORE …….. |
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Peak Experience
On the eve of my fiftieth birthday, it seems oddly natural that I find myself in an old Russian helicopter rising thousands of miles over the —MORE …….. |
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Marriage As Realpolitik Elizabeth I had a proper perspective on political marriage. Having seen both her mother and her stepmother beheaded by her father, Henry VIII, —MORE …….. |
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Heroism: Theory and Practice BY NATURE, I AM A ROMANTIC and have had warrior fantasies since my early adolescence. Surrounding myself with images of heroic battles, I enjoyed —MORE …….. |
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Transspecies Transplants: Home-Grown Atrocities THE SYMPTOMS ARRIVED A FEW YEARS AGO. At first I experienced them as a generalized discomfort, amorphous and confused, but they got —MORE …….. |
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Abortion Providers: The New “Communists”?
I KNEW THAT THINGS HAD CHANGED WHEN I WAS HANDED a button that read “I’m Pro-Choice and I shoot back” at a recent abortion-providers conference —MORE …….. |
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Tragedy, American-Style Television described it as a “great human drama,” but in the end I found the surreal progression of the white Ford Bronco with O.J. Simpson —MORE …….. |
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Not Just Another Packwood Story All told 1985 was not an unusually dangerous year. There had been a rash of fire bombings at abortion clinics, a physician had been kidnapped, and my secretary was attending a course with the Bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco and Firearms to teach her how to correctly open my mail so that she could avoid being blown away by a letter bomb. It was, after all, business as usual for those of us on the front lines of the abortion wars. —MORE …….. |
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High Noon in Moscow Somewhere in the course of planning my latest journey to Russia I lost my fear of flying. It left me suddenly, without fanfare or notice. I simply came —MORE …….. OTI Dialogue: Congressman John Lewis and Andrea Dworkin Towards a Revolution in Values The Congressman arrived flushed with triumph. He had just been part of the victorious vote on the law to ban assault rifles. It was an auspicious beginning, for ON THE —MORE …….. |
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Praise the lord and kill the doctor Question: What would you do if you found yourself in a room with Hitler, Mussolini, and an abortionist, and you had a gun with only two bullets? —MORE …….. A Discussion with Liz Holtzman and Alice Vachss Why haven’t candidates, especially, women candidates, made violence against women Ðand specifically rape Ð a central issue in election campaigns? And how can women’s groups formulate a political agenda to attack the problem? To find out, the editors of ON THE ISSUES invited two well known prosecutors of rape cases to discuss the issue and generate ideas on how women can move forward on this issue. —MORE …….. |
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Death takes the Stage Nothing focuses the mind like the prospect of death. Contemplating the cessation of being immediately changes priorities. Always the sleeping giant on the stage, death suddenly assumes the spotlight as the rest of reality recedes into soft focus. La Rochefoucauld said that death, like the sun, should not be stared at. But I have no desire to shield myself from its power. —MORE …….. |
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The Text behind that Cover Girl Smile
In the morning that I would be posing for photographers for an upcoming profile in Lears magazine I of course dressed myself with more than my customary attention to detail. —MORE …….. |
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Sex after the fall In some ways my personal and political ties with Russia seem to have an uncanny quality -almost like destiny. —MORE …….. |
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Choices: The Road Not Taken I once attended a small social gathering which included a woman who professed great skill in analyzing people through calculating —MORE …….. |
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First Ladies, Second Sex
It was one of those defining moments: I am watching the finals of the Miss USA pageant and the tension is palpable. —MORE …….. |
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“Thelma and Louise Live.”
I never really wear the things: Political buttons, T shirts with messages, designer-labeled bags. I don’t like to advertise my politics or buying —MORE …….. |
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Isn’t It Enough to Make You Scream?
I have this fantasy. It’s a variation on that wonderful scene in the movie “Network,” when the eccentric, somewhat mad character —MORE …….. |
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Is Being Female a Birth Defect?
Growing up in Philadelphia in the 1950s was a special kind of wasteland. a time when one’s worth and acceptance as a female was measured by the width —MORE …….. |
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A dialogue with Eli Wiesel “I Am Against Fanatics” A Dialogue Between Elie Wiesel and Merle Hoffman on Abortion, Love and the Holocaust The first time I heard it was in Detroit in 1982. The words shot out at me like bullets, creating an immediate mental image that could not be shared. —MORE …….. |
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Living in a land of Sexual Violence
I have an old friend who lives in North Miami. She’s bright, solidly middle class, married and a mother. She also carries a .38 with —MORE …….. |
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Compassion and Consistency
I have always had a problem with a style of consistency that demands seeing things in black and white holding the line for political purity. —MORE …….. |
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Survivors
I am a child of the holocaust, a survivor of sorts, a kind of surrogate sufferer. I have never smelled the burning flesh or felt the pain of my —MORE …….. |
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Arlene Pfeiffer It was 1984, and Ronald Reagan was in the fourth year of his presidency. The country was awash in the mythology of patriotism and family values, and Arlene Pfeiffer met reality head on. It wasn’t that she was stupid or in any way naive. Perhaps she thought that in some unexplainable way she was exempt, that it could not happen to her and that, magically, it would not happen to her. After all, she was an honor student, had been one since the 10th grade and came from a good Pennsylvania family. Not her, not Arlene. —MORE …….. |
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More than a Woman’s Issue “I love your enemies because they drive you to my arms for comfort”- Edna St. Vincent Millay – 1941 1 was very young when I read that sonnet -when those words arrested me with the power of their insight. With similar shattering clarity, —MORE …….. “It was the prison that had proved the best school. A more painful, but a more vital, school. Here I had been brought close to the depths and complexities of the human soul; here —MORE …….. |
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ABORTION – THE “ISSUE” It seemed to have happened quietly, quickly, very subtly. It was there, overshadowing everything else, demanding immediate attention. —MORE …….. |
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American Fantasies
I am going to miss Ronald Reagan. Miss him in places of personal history and political passion. Miss him in a very special way because of —MORE …….. |
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Where are the Troops? “Where are your troops, Hoffman?” The question came at me from left field. It was raining, cold and very early in the morning. I was standing behind a police barricade on East 85th Street —MORE …….. |
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Women’s Lives Under Padding I learned about paddings accidentally many years ago. It was in a time before my consciousness was raised. —MORE …….. MH: How did you achieve your level of political consciousness and activism? PK: One of my mottos is that “The personal is the political, and the political is the personal.” It started rather early when I left Germany after being in a Catholic convent in Bavaria. —MORE …….. |
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Two Faces of Motherhood
It was the pots and pans that finally activated me. I had followed the case for days in the media with a somewhat distant intellectual curiosity, —MORE …….. |
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The New Crusaders
I have always worn a lot of black, even when it was out of fashion. Perhaps it was my flair for the dramatic or tendencies towards romanticism. —MORE …….. |
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Quiet Heroines November, 1985 did not come quietly for me. It was a month of immersion in violence and conferences. It was also a month for Quiet Heroines. —MORE …….. |
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Medical E.R.A.
It was Mother’s Day and the son of William Schroeder was responding to repeated questions on David Brinkley’s television show —MORE …….. I am overhearing a phone conversation the tone of the speaker is intimate concerned loving parental.., long complicated words are being spelled out -R E T I N I T I S- CHEMOTHERAPY-LYMPHA D E N 0 PAT H Y- repeated again and again. The voice on the other side of the phone was BOBBY’s and he has missed his appointment “Is your lover with you now -does he know you will probably have to be going into the hospital?” The question is asked gently but firmly. The speaker is a nurse practitioner named Gary. His bright red curly hair, plaid shirt, glasses and jeans place him just about anywhere. His name tag and stethoscope around his neck -the phone at his ear -the place I am standing in- place him on ward 86 at San Francisco General Hospital -the Oncology Unit The AIDS Ward. —MORE …….. FLO KENNEDY and IRENE DAVALL: Forever Activists With Volume V, On the Issues is pleased to welcome two contributing editors: Florence Kennedy and Irene Davall, long time activists in both the civil rights and women’s movements. In 1971, they were instrumental in founding the Feminist Party, a national but informal organization still in existence, that works for women’s equality and choice by instituting legislative action and political action in behalf of candidates. The first candidate to be supported by the party was Shirley Chisholm. Flo Kennedy, an attorney, was also one of the original founders of NOW, but abandoned it soon after when she decided it was geared too much to white, middle-class women. In 1969, she gave up her law practice to ‘kick more ass” by lecturing and writing. Her book, Abortion Rap (regrettably out-of-print) was a comprehensive compilation of information on the abortion issue, including the testimonies of women who were forced to face illegal and unsafe abortions. No one can adequately describe Flo Kennedy on paper -this straight talking, clear thinking dynamo has to be experienced in the flesh for the full flavor of her earthiness and zest to be appreciated. —MORE …….. A Conversation: The Rev. Beatrice Blair and Merle Hoffman MH: Were you the first female Episcopal priest? BB: I was in the first group. There were some before me, but when I went into the seminary, women had not yet been allowed to be ordained priests. —MORE …….. |
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ON THE ISSUES In the cheaper stores, it’s much more obvious – Sometimes there’s a big sign announcing that everything on the rack is $19.95. Usually the tag is brightly colored, not difficult to see. When you move up – Bendel’s. Bergdorf’s – it’s a little more subtle – Sometimes hidden in the sleeve or under another set of labels. In these more elevated states of spending, there’s usually a broker – salesperson – someone who tells you – you must do this blouse with that skirt or that Halston does a little belt for this outfit. Without asking – the product is presented. Carried along by the necessity of appearing able to afford whatever is being brought to you – finding the price tag becomes a little more difficult. —MORE …….. |
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Abortion’s silent constituency
She must have been in her mid-40s. The lines and depressions in her face testified to a life that had not been easy to live, or comfortable —MORE …….. |
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Abortion is the Front Line
There I was at the Plaza Hotel – grey gabardine suit -attache case -bussiness meeting. Around me muted conversations -one waiter joking with another —MORE …….. |
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Politicized by Henry Hyde
I remember it distinctly the point in time when I became political: it was summer, 1976, and the smells and sounds of a country morning —MORE …….. |