By Merle Hoffman

When I opened one of the first abortion clinics in the country in 1971, two years before Roe v. Wade, women finally had access to safe, legal abortions. 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, far away from the back-alley secrecy and lethal dangers.

I remember my first patient who travelled from New Jersey because abortion was still illegal in that state. She was white, in her mid-thirties, and married with two children. Abortion had then been viewed as a crime, a sin, a pathological response to pregnancy, an act of utter desperation.

I was 25 years old and nervous. In this, as in all my other tasks, no one had trained me. What could I say to her? What would she say to me? She was pregnant and did not want to be. Coming to my clinic required an enormous amount of courage, and now her future was in my hands. I was to guide her way; I was to be her bridge into the realms of power and responsibility that encompass the abortion decision.

I recall holding her hand tightly in mine to ease the discomfort of the dilators. Her hand came to symbolize the intimate personal connection of one woman helping another, the gravity of forming a natural alliance with that woman and the thousands who followed her.

Now, 48 years later, I can’t count how many hands I held, how many heads I caressed, how many times I whispered into how many ears, “It will be alright, just breathe slowly.” I saw so much vulnerability: legs spread wide apart; the physician crouched between white, black, thin, heavy, but always trembling, thighs; the tube sucking the fetal life from their bodies.

“It’ll be over soon, just take one more deep breath” — one last thrust and pull of the catheter — then the gurgle that signaled the end of the abortion. Gynecologists called it the “uterine cry.” Over and over again I witnessed women’s invariable relief after their abortion that they were not dead, that God did not strike them down by lightning, and that they could walk out of this place not pregnant any more. Grateful that their lives had been given back to them.

The act of abortion positions women at their most powerful, and that is why it is so strongly opposed by many in society. Historically viewed and conditioned to be passive, dependent creatures, and victims of biological circumstance, women assume the power over life and death with the choice of abortion — it is they who decide when and whether to bring new life into the world.

In 1989, I led the first pro-choice civil disobedience action at St. Patrick’s Cathedral in New York City. Nine people were arrested as we hung our Proclamation of Women’s Transcendent and Generational Rights on the great doors of the cathedral which stated:

1. Women are full moral agents with the right and the responsibility to choose when and whether they will be mothers.

2. Abortion is a choice made by each woman for profound personal reasons that no man or State should judge.

3. The right to reproductive choice is a woman’s legacy throughout history, and belongs to every woman regardless of age, class, race, religion or sexual preference.

4. Abortion is a life-affirming act chosen within the context of women’s realities, women’s lives and women’s sexuality.

5. Abortion is the most moral choice in a world that frequently denies healthcare, housing education and economic survival.

Now, in the year 2019, we are facing a full frontal assault on these principles and on the delivery of women’s reproductive care from “heartbeat bills” to legislation calling for as much as 99 years in prison for doctors who perform abortions (which was approved yesterday in Alabama with Senate passage of a total abortion ban, punishing providers with up to 99 years in prison, and criminal penalties for women who have them).

The power of the state and the fundamentalists who control much of its levers are directed to ensure that every attempt will be made to push women back to a place where they once again become the tools and vessels of the political fundamentalist forces.

“How did we get to this point?” you may well ask.

Since the legalization of abortion by Roe in 1973, millions of women have had abortions, over one million at Choices alone. I could get into a deep forensic analysis of the strategic weaknesses of both the Pro-Choice and Feminist Movements, the silence surrounding my prophetic announcements, the minimization of the relentless and patient nature of our enemy, but we are way beyond this now.

I must agree with Aleksandr Solzhenitsyn, who said in his Nobel Lecture, “I am indeed thrown arbitrarily into history. I therefore choose to voluntarily shoulder the responsibilities of my advantages and the burden of my disadvantages.”