Choices Women's Medical Center history

In November 1974, Hoffman was the initiator and moderator for New York City’s first Women’s Health Forum, with speakers including Barbara Ehrenreich and Congresswoman Bella Abzug.

In 1975, Hoffman helped develop and introduce a program to diagnosis women with breast cancer in an outpatient center.

Merle Hoffman is the co-founder and first President of the National Abortion Federation (1976), uniting providers and advocates.

In 1982 Hoffman started a pathbreaking program known as STOP (Second Treatment Option Program). Prior to its inception women were not consulted as to their diagnosis or treatment options.

In 1984 she began working with Russian hospitals and doctors to develop CHOICES East, the first feminist outpatient medical center in Russia and organized Russian feminists to deliver an open letter to Boris Yeltsin on the state of women’s health care.

She founded the activist New York Pro-Choice Coalition in 1985 to counteract the growing threat of anti-abortion terrorism in New York.

When Operation Rescue announced it would shut down abortion services in New York City for a week in the spring of 1988, the New York Pro-Choice Coalition responded by rebranding those days “Reproductive Freedom Week,” organizing a counter-protest that drew 1,300 activists and supporters.

In 1989 Hoffman and the Coalition also publicly challenged New York City’s Cardinal John O’Connor’s support of Operation Rescue, which she deemed “violent to women,” by organizing the first pro-choice civil disobedience action outside St Patrick’s Cathedral in New York City.

Hoffman was awarded the prestigious Front Page Award for Political Commentary in 2010 from the Newswoman’s Club of New York for her editorial, “Selecting the Same Sex.”

In 2011, Hoffman endowed a Director’s position for Sustained Leadership of the Duke University Sallie Bingham Center for Women’s History and Culture.

Merle Hoffman’s memoir, Intimate Wars: The Life and Times of the Woman Who Brought Abortion from the Back Alley to the Boardroom, was published in 2012 by Feminist Press.

Created by Merle Hoffman in 2015 to help immigrant and minority women who live in shame-and-honor cultures, Choices Global Institute of Healing and Education is a nonprofit foundation to support projects in the USA and internationally that promote health services and education for underserved women.

In 2019 she traveled again on a health mission to Russia with Project Kesher and, with Choices staff members, spoke to and advised many health professionals in Moscow.