Intimate Wars

by Merle Hoffman

  At Choices, the steps of the familiar process played out in surreal reversal. The blood tests, the images of the sonogram, the table, the stirrups—they were all for me. Marty stood at the head of the table and held my hand while Dr. Mohammed performed the abortion. Now I was joined to the common experience of my sex. But as I lay on the table I had stood beside to support so many others, I felt irrevocably alone. The hands that touched and caressed my hair felt as if they moved through a dark porous divide that separated me from everything that I knew or had been before. As I spread my legs like all my sisters, I thought of the child whose time was not now. Strange how I thought of the fetus as female, as if that shared gender gave me a more special connection.

  Yet despite that connection—the recognition of the fetus’s potential to become my child—I knew that I could not allow this pregnancy to come to term. My sense of self, my sense of time, the flow of my movement toward goals that I had created had been interrupted the moment my test came back positive. The fetus was an invader, a separate force growing inside me, demanding and creating potentially unalterable realities. I couldn’t let my life become someone else’s.

  St. Thomas Aquinas wrote that each individual operates by the “law of self-preservation,” the instinctive tendency we have to survive at all costs. The Catholic Church’s just war doctrine accepts the taking of human life if one’s life or that of another is directly threatened, in keeping with Aquinas’s “natural law.”13 Does the fetus not impede a woman’s tendency to maintain her own existence? Is it not an unjust aggressor, threatening the survival of the mother? Is not a woman’s choice of abortion an act of self-defense? With my choice I was fighting for the right of all women to define abortion as an act of love: love for the family one already has, and just as important, love for oneself. I was fighting to reclaim abortion as a mother’s act. It was an act of solidarity as significant as any other I had committed.

  After my abortion, as I slowly awoke from the anesthesia, I became conscious of immense and overwhelming feelings: non-specific, non-directed. Love, relief—then sadness.

  A few days later, walking down the hallway in Choices, I heard loud, wrenching sobs coming from the recovery room. A woman was waking from anesthesia and crying for her mother. I went to her bed, lowered the side rails, and gently tried to soothe her. As I bent down to her face she whispered in a halting Russian accent, “You’re the only one I have now, I’m all alone. You’ve saved my life by being here.” I held the woman close, enormously moved, savoring our connection. There was no good or bad, no issue of choice. There was nothing more than the pure energy of survival, and women doing what they had been doing for centuries throughout history, what they will do forever.

  MARTY AND I didn’t talk much about my abortion. He was never one to feel comfortable articulating his feelings, but I know he must have had a deep reaction. Oh, how silence can palpate, how distance between self and other can be stretched, distorted, choked with expectations not met. I had learned very early on how to deal with invisibility in my relationship with my father. Marty’s silence left me in the same place.

  Years later he told me that if I had become pregnant during our affair, he would have immediately left his wife to marry me. I was shocked when I heard that. Although I knew that pregnancy was often used as a tool in relationships, it never occurred to me to use it in ours.

  The distance between Marty and me after the abortion had become characteristic of our relationship. In our early days together there had been no question of who was the teacher and who was the pupil. But now I’d passed him by on multiple levels, and my progress became one more obstacle to intimacy between us. Our competition with each other was like a blood sport, and our relationship thinned a little each time a cut was made. He was still proud of me, but the pride was mixed with envy of my youth, my public prominence, and my future. Once, when we were lying in bed together, he turned to me with that loving look, now shaded with sadness, and asked whether we could declare a cease-fire. I gently touched his cheek, whispering my assent.

  After the crescendo of our wedding, we had fallen into a comfortably numbing routine. Garrison had become a kind of beautiful green prison. We would eat dinner together and then go to our corners, his in the den, where he smoked his pipe, and mine in the bedroom where I retreated to read. Or I’d take solitary walks on the Appalachian Trail while Marty puttered about or watched a game. I hated the sounds of those games. I remembered them coming from my father’s den, the constant screams of the crowd over some ball.

  And then there were the politics of sleep. Marty always said that bed was only for sleeping or fucking, but for me it was a womb, a final port of safety, a place where I could be most free, both in body and mind. I loved to take to my bed to read, write, talk on the phone for hours with friends, letting sleep come naturally when it may. But no matter the stress of the day or the passion of the night, Marty went to bed at exactly eleven thirty, right after the news. I couldn’t talk with him, read, or even move for fear of disturbing him. Eventually, I had to move out of our bedroom.

  When we traveled, our marriage felt like a continuation of the excitement of our affair. Abroad, we could be ourselves, with no expectations from others. We went on cruises to Alaska, safaris in Africa, visited beautiful hidden spas in the winter wonderlands of Scandinavia. Marty took me back to the Carlton Hotel in France, and this time we shared a suite overlooking the Mediterranean with my little dog Noodles. I sunned on the beach at Cannes without a bra, feeling totally comfortable with Marty by my side. He loved to show me off, and I reveled in his admiration. And yet, I remember watching the students lazily camped out on the beach in Cannes as I walked along the tree-lined avenues, wishing myself with them, envying their freedom. I had the feeling that my marriage was a garment that never quite fit. I was always attempting to move quickly, to stretch, to turn, to run, and even sometimes to dance—a Dionysian dance, one of release and forgetting—but that was impossible.

  I tried to find ways to bridge the distance between us. Once, I came home on a Saturday to Garrison from a particularly intense meeting at Brooklyn Law School where Shere Hite had spoken. I was filled with philosophy and the danger of the ideas we had discussed. It was summer, and Marty was in the kitchen preparing dinner. I wanted to talk to him about the meeting, but he could not engage on any level except a sarcastic one. He wouldn’t even turn off the faucet so he could hear what I had to say. I gave up and went outside to set the table, my head spinning from the tension of my competing realities.

  Guests we invited offered a bit of relief from what I often experienced as a deadening sameness. One evening Barry Feinstein, one of New York’s most politically influential labor leaders (who was later revealed to have embezzled union funds), came to our house for dinner. My experience as president of NAAF and the success of my debate tour had led me to consider entering electoral politics, and I asked him his opinion on whether I should throw my hat in the proverbial ring. “Who the hell do you think you are?” he answered. “How do you think you could do anything in politics? You are a woman from Westchester who gives great parties.”

  Another time Harold Fisher, then the chairman of the Metropolitan Transit Authority (MTA), floated in my indoor pool in his black glasses, pontificating on the nature of realpolitik. I sat at the pool’s edge and argued my stance on an abortion bill that had been brought to the state senate. When I asked for his help and support, he dismissively replied, “There are no issues—only elections.”

  I turned to animals to ease some of the loneliness and boredom I felt at home. I would respond to pleas on the radio from the local shelters: “If someone calls in the next two hours, you can save this cat’s or dog’s life.” Many of my companion animals came into my life that way.

  On one of my long walks I became friendly with a neighbor who lived at the bottom of the mountain. She had a riding stable and led horse and pony treks on the Appalachian Trail. I began going for rides with her as often as poss
ible, but I soon grew tired of having to live by my neighbor’s schedule. It wasn’t long before I felt the desire to create my own equestrian world. I cleared two acres of rocky, mountainous land, built an eight-stall barn, and filled it with horses.

  The barn became my private space. I approached riding with the same discipline that had kept me at the piano playing obsessively, and I would practice the delicate, difficult moves of dressage in the indoor ring for hours. I rode alone on the paths behind my land, writing speeches in my head. I loved jumping most of all; there is something extraordinary about flying on a two-thousand-pound animal—the degree of trust it involves, the courage of both horse and rider, the complete fusion of two bodies and minds at that one moment of suspension. With my horses there was no need for translation, no fear of misunderstandings. Our communication was clear and direct, with no detours through ego.

  I WAS ALWAYS CAPABLE of hiding my inner turmoil from professional colleagues and political allies, conscious of projecting an image of impenetrable grace and power. I had become a feminist in solitude, separated from the movement and the writers of my time. This had its benefits: my perceptions were less contaminated by theory or polemics. But I was ready to strengthen my connection to other feminists, to join and help direct the feminist movement. Almost in defiance of the hermetic lifestyle I led with Marty and his difficulty in communicating with me intellectually, I decided to embark on a new project that would place me at the center of the network of feminists who I perceived were shaping the politics of the times.

  We were still in the early years of legalization, and despite Reagan’s war on abortion, feminists had enough sway to influence the way the issue was handled in the media and reach out to those who’d been victimized by the guilt and judgment that characterized those years. After years of writing pamphlets, educational materials, and newspaper articles, I felt that the most effective way to communicate my personal and political ideas and catalyze a network of others who shared my values would be through a print publication that could be distributed to patients and mailed to pro-choice constituents and fellow feminists.

  I started by publishing an eight-page Choices newsletter. I opened the first issue with the Euripides quotation “Woman is woman’s natural ally” and wrote of my experience founding Choices and the catalytic inspiration of my patients. I purchased large mailing lists of health providers, women’s groups, student health centers—any organization I thought would be interested—and sent out thirty thousand free copies of the newsletter.

  It wasn’t long before letters began pouring in. People wrote to me about the topics we covered, thanked me for publishing the newsletter, and even sent checks with their requests for more issues. Carolyn Handel, a cousin of mine who had worked in advertising and sales with the magazine High Times, suggested I take advantage of the groundswell and publish a real magazine with subscriptions and advertising. Not knowing anything about publishing, I did what came naturally: I jumped in headfirst and learned as I went. Carolyn started selling ads and promoting the vision, I recruited more writers, we published quarterly, and before I knew it, On the Issues magazine was alive and growing.

  Subsequent editions covered the symbols and rallies of the pro-choice movement, the fundamental tenets of Patient Power, and the important work of pro-choice organizations like NAF. Feminist projects, workshops, and meetings were announced and promoted in every issue. No topic was off limits: I included articles on obstacles faced by women of color, systemic inequalities that affected gays and lesbians, international women’s rights, and animal rights. Articles were contributed by pro-choice activists, prominent feminists, providers, doctors, and even patients who had a message they wanted to share. The magazine gave me a long-sought-after intellectual peer group. It stimulated my thinking, functioned as an educational tool, and provided a forum for philosophical discussions. It was exactly what I needed.

  Exhilarated by the success of On the Issues, wanting my ideas to reach even more people, I wrote, co-produced, and directed a thirty-minute film titled Abortion: A Different Light, which aired on several cable channels and reached eleven million homes. I structured the film as a group of interviews, a collection of stories related to abortion. Pro-choice leaders and Choices staff told moving stories of their experiences with the issue. Marty described his experiences on the “Midnight Express” and spoke about the struggles doctors faced in helping women who were hospitalized for attempting self-abortions, and Bill Baird described the firebombing of his clinic. I included a few clips from my debates and interviewed Lawrence Lader, longtime abortion rights advocate, Sarah Weddington, the lawyer for the plaintiff in Roe, and others.

  The stories these providers and politicians told were illuminating, but I thought the true beauty of my film lay in the interviews with patients about their personal experiences. Their voices served as a form of resistance to the public’s obsessive focus on the fetus, a way to recenter the issue of reproductive rights in the reality of women’s lives, where it belonged.

  The most striking of these voices was that of one of my first patients, Helen Cole, a Catholic who had been against abortion until that moment came when she knew she had to have one. When I approached her to ask if she would participate in the film, she told me it would be very difficult for her to talk about her abortion. Then she met my gaze. “I want to be in your film,” she said. “It will be my gift to you and the movement.” The memory of her courage and generosity will always be with me.

  IN 1982, I spoke to a large audience at a NOW meeting in Rockland County:Tonight when I use the words “anti-abortion” I want you to put in their place “anti-women.” For whoever would drive women to butchers again, whoever would deprive them of freedom and liberty in the name of god, law, or politics—is most surely their enemy. We must never forget that beyond the words, the fanaticism, the debates, the discussions, there are grown women who must not be sacrificed on the altars of unanswered and unanswerable questions of when life begins and who and when and if it should be protected. We must never allow women to be manipulated and pressured by political struggles between the church and state or fall victims of a religious holy war. For underlying all opposition to abortion, all attempts at restrictive legislation, is a vocal and virulent minority who are attempting to impose their own personal belief of the immorality of abortion on all of us.

  . . . There is only one absolute truth in regard to abortion and that is that it must remain a matter of personal decision and private conscience. Liberty and freedom to choose, like breathing, eating, walking, and loving, are rights granted to us by a higher authority than Senators Hatch, Helms, or Hyde!

  In the ten years since the creation of Flushing Women’s, the clinic had gone from serving five patients per week to becoming a nationally recognized model of a successful women’s health care facility. I decided to throw a “Revolutionary Ball,” a costume party to celebrate Choices’ tenth anniversary. It would be held at the St. Regis Hotel, and I would invite all the political players who had been involved from the start. Everyone was required to dress as their revolutionary hero.

  The event was covered in Page Six of the Post, with the humorous headline, “Labor Big Shots Frolic In Fancy Costumes.” The great fun of having a political costume ball allowed otherwise serious heavyweights to play. Marty went as George Washington, in silk hose and a ruffled shirt. President of the Sanitation Union Ed Ostrowski was Thomas Jefferson, Jack Bigel was Lafayette, and Harold Fisher, the ex-MTA chief, came as Henry George, the nineteenth-century economist who pushed for a onetime land tax. Others came costumed as George Sand, Madame Roland, and Martha Washington. I was Fanny Wright, with a high white wig and a wide crinoline gown.

  That night, I was completely in my element. So much had happened in the last decade. I’d helped pioneer and define an entirely new world. Traveling the country, debating on television, delivering my message to crowds of women, I was more myself than I had ever been. I felt a sense of completeness, happiness in th
e knowledge that my entire being was in use, as if every part of me was active and interactive. The light of the passion for my work kept the struggles of my marriage in the shadows.

  The Politics of Courage

  “A life beset with danger is always the best school for acquiring a brave spirit.”

  —JOHANNES MÜLLER, HINDRANCES OF LIFE (1909)

  Miss Hoffman,” he said, “how many abortions did your facility do last year?” I was debating Jerry Falwell in Detroit in 1983 on national television.

  “Reverend, I believe we did nine thousand abortions,” I told him proudly. To my thinking this high number was a measure of the excellence of our work. Like any medical practice, any business, the more people who come to you, the better your services are assumed to be.

  But to Falwell’s ears it was a measure of mass murder.

  “When you meet your maker with the blood of nine thousand babies on your hands, what will you say? How will you justify that?”

  “Reverend, when I meet her, I will be very proud, because I fought and struggled for women’s rights.”

  “Her? Her? Are you saying god is a woman?”

  “No, Reverend,” I said. “God is beyond gender.”

  A woman in the audience rose, obviously distraught, her voice shaking. She relayed her own experience with abortion: the guilt still with her, the doctor’s coldness, how “they”—the abortion doctors—would not let her see her child. She extended her hand, pointed an accusing finger at me, and declared, “You are nothing but a Hitler to me.”

  Her words shot out at me like bullets. It was useless to attempt to respond to this angry woman. Caught in the same battle all women were fighting, drowning in her own society-inflicted guilt, she was only repeating the popular anti-choice rhetoric of the day.