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Intimate Wars
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Merle Hoffman is an award-winning journalist, activist, and women's health care pioneer. In 1971, she founded CHOICES, one of the first ambulatory abortion centers, which has become one of the nation's largest and most comprehensive women's medical facilities in the US. She is also the publisher of On the Issues, an online feminist magazine. www.twitter.com/MerleHoffman

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Intimate Wars

The Life and Times of the Woman Who Brought Abortion from the Back Alley to the Board Room
Merle Hoffman

Merle Hoffman's life story is riveting. A former classical pianist, a self-made millionaire, and a feminist who found her life's work providing abortions, she has been a fearless crusader for women's right to choose.

Over the years, Hoffman has 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 to legalize abortion nationally), Hoffman founded Choices, an abortion clinic in New York. As a medical provider, she pioneered "patient power," encouraging women to participate in their own health care decisions. And going against even her own expectations for her life after fifty, she adopted a child and writes about her experience as a mother.

Whether addressing the murder of abortion providers like Dr. George Tiller or challenging women to understand their own power over their bodies and the language used to wield such power, Merle Hoffman has been on the front lines of the feminist movement, a fierce warrior in the battle for choice.

A searingly honest debut memoir by a leader in the fight for a woman's right to “legally gain and exercise reproductive choice—the power of life and death.”

—Kirkus Reviews

"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."

—Eleanor Bader, Truthout

"At last, we have Merle Hoffman's bold and courageous memoir of living on the front lines of the abortion wars. Merle never turned away from the harshest battles or denied the most painful truths."

—Blanche Wiesen Cook, author of Eleanor Roosevelt

"Merle Hoffman has blazed a freedom trail while saving countless women's lives along the way"

Bill Baird, founder of the Pro-Choice League

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