Defend Reproductive Rights with Merle Hoffman

Q&A with Merle Hoffman

• When does your book come out?
• My book is out. It is out and about in the world. I think about three months, it’s been out. I wrote it last year during an eight month period because it was so important to get it out. So it’s available and we can get one to you, I believe. I think something has been set up for this event, so I would like to give the participants the ability to get this book and love you to read it. Yes, I want to give them that free because I want to spread the word.
• Are there any opportunities that you know of for high schoolers and college students to spread awareness for abortion rights, maybe internships, papers, etc.?
• Absolutely. Definitely. At Choices, we have lots of ability for interns. I have a very strong outreach program. We go into prisons, we go into schools, we have kids come in from other types of organizations. You can work in marketing, you can work in outreach, you can work in some of our politics. You just send in your information and we’ll get back to you and we will definitely find a place, because everyone has some ability to give to this. I don’t think you have to march 24 hours a day—you just do what you can but do something. Do something. That’s it. That’s the Choices website. Please put a link to the website, and I’d like to put a link to On The Issues, to the magazine, and also to MerleHoffman.com. And again, I want to stress there’s so much history and so much wonderful writing, you know, from the real—I won’t say seminal writers— ovulal writers of the women’s movement, let’s use some language—ovulal writers— so go into On The Issues and it’s a treasure trove, really. Really, really. And don’t be afraid if you’re thinking of something like that. Remember, I just started a little newsletter, and something grows from that. You never know. You have to plant a seed and never think anything is impossible. It’s just that word should not be in your vocabulary. It shouldn’t. I mean, look at me. I’m orbiting the Earth! That’s, you know, anything is [possible].
• You have been a prominent activist for decades at this, right? So I would love to know, for you, how has activism changed from the seventies to now? How does it look different? What is the day-to-day?
• It’s very different. Yeah. You have to understand, in the seventies, activism meant physically acting, getting out of the house, either marching or going to, you know, going to meetings, developing rape crisis centers, working in abortion clinics, which was sort of is the highest level of commitment you could do. But since then, I can’t stress enough the radical changes that social media has brought. And now the activism seems to be on the computer. And yes, it’s wonderful that you can write and say, like, meet me at, you know, Bryant Park. And but that’s not enough. I mean, that will not change. Look at where we are! I mean, 50 years of what we thought was a constitutional right, overturned. And I always go to the Black Lives Matter movement, you know, I mean, they were out on the street constantly. And we can all argue about how much that really changed things. But the fact is that everybody was doing that. Everybody!  But I don’t see any of that—I don’t see anything in the streets. I don’t hear anything. You know, everything is directed towards the election. And I’m not, you know, yes, vote, yes. we have to. But that’s not the answer. You can see that the Supreme Court wasn’t the answer. The law didn’t save us, didn’t protect us. The elections are not going to protect us. 
  
  The bottom line is that we have to take responsibility ourselves. Now, that’s a message that is not very, you know, attractive to a lot of people now, because really they’d rather be at home on the computer and just liking or not liking or doing. That’s not going to do it. I hate to say this, but I have to say it’s a struggle. We have to love it because that’s what it is. That’s what it is. That’s the difference. That’s a major, major difference.
• So you spoke earlier about you have to love the struggle. And I feel like it’s very easy to get sad and angry when you look at all the news about abortion and how our rights are being rolled back. So what are some ways that you take care of yourself to make sure you can be sustainable in struggle?
• Yeah, people ask me, you know, don’t you get depressed? Of course! There are times that I despair, there are times I get depressed. But I have the deep understanding that this is an ongoing generational struggle, that this is not something you win or lose, that, okay, we won this referendum—that’s just a battle. And there are many, many battles. This is a war we’re in. And if you look what’s happening around the world, women, the Taliban just announced in Afghanistan, they’re going to reinstitute public stoning of adulterers, women adulterers, in the public square. They’re reintroducing this! You know, I mean, we’re just one part of what is happening to women in this world. And this country used to be the light, you know, I mean, nations looked to us, but now we have to look to South America, which, amazingly, countries like Mexico, Colombia, you know, Venezuela, have decriminalized abortion. So what keeps me going is, first of all, a philosophical understanding that I’m not in this to win because I don’t see it that way. I’m in this to be—I’m privileged to be a part of what I see is a long term struggle. And King always used to talk about the arc of justice. I don’t know where the arc is for women, but, you know, it’s a long, long way off. And if you put it in perspective, if you don’t take it personally, I think that’s very important, you know, then you can keep going. And that’s not to say I need to, you know, so sometimes I feel like I want to get out of the whole thing. It’s sort of like a marriage, I can’t stand it. And in fact, it’s a big but I always come back because I know this is my life and this is my commitment. And I tell you, it’s so good to have a commitment like that, to have the responsibility of a commitment to have that cause, because it gives your life so much meaning. It gives it so much meaning. 
  
  I really hope that people do have the courage. And I always talk about practicing courage. I didn’t just, you know, it wasn’t just, you know, I woke up and I had the courage to do that and go down to Queens. From the time I was a kid, I was always pushing back, you know, kids, I always say it’s the courage of mo, no, I won’t. But little by little, we get, you know, put down, put down, put down— authority. do that this way, that way. But you got to keep that resistance within you. When you see something unfair, when you see something that’s not right, you got to go back to that point of resistance, say I want to stand up for what’s right and what’s true and I don’t want to go along with all the other narratives and false facts and B.S.
• I read a bit about some of the abortion pill networks in South America that are really inspiring, and I was wondering what models you see being used similarly in the US or what’s giving you hope right now? 
• Okay. When I co-founded Rise Up 4 Abortion Rights, which was this radical group, if you may remember we were the only ones out the street after Dobbs with their big green banners, etc., etc. We worked extremely closely with the women in South America who developed this green wave. They got their countries to decriminalize because of the constant relentless pressure. So we’ve work with them, now they have to work with us, but we have to be able to move and to keep that pressure going by constant action. And let me just say this: Biden, he presents himself as a savior of reproductive rights, he is not. But let’s say he gets into office, we can’t leave our feet up on the desk and say, “Okay, Biden, the Democrats are going to save us.” We have to put pressure, pressure, pressure, because, you know, the Hyde Amendment after all these years is still in effect. And Biden and Obama and Clinton could have, just by edict, gotten rid of it, but they haven’t. Nobody’s screaming about that. So it really requires pressure or else we do not have a democracy or a democratic republic. We really have, you know, an authoritarian fundamentalist theocracy, which somebody talked about. That’s what we have. 
  
  And, you know, they just put the right to legal, safe abortion in the French constitution. Has anybody read about that in France? They put it into their constitutions. I’ve been doing some research. This is one of my crazy dreams. I want to apply for American women to be able to have political asylum in France, because in France, we can be free to access that service, but we can’t in our country. So I’ve gone now to talk to a couple of attorneys, and it is very complicated, but that’s something in my mind. Really.