politics." out in august of 2012. >> up next on booktv, merle hoffman recounts her life and career as a women's health care activist. she recalls her founder of choices in 1971, two years prior to the roe v. wade supreme court decision. this is about an hour, 20 minutes. [applause] >> good evening, everyone. i'm very pleased, proud and privileged to be here this evening and share my work and my memoir with you, particularly at this time in the history of our country before these critical elections. the issues of choice and reproductive freedom burn bright stronger ander than really ever before.

so i'm going to start with reading from my preface. and i start with a quote from ludwig victimmen stein. nothing is so difficult as not deseing one's self. twenty years ago i attended a party at which a numerologist offered to analyze my name. after performing what appeared to be complicated mathematical computations, she told me my number was 11, a powerful number. then she looked at me quizzically. how strange, she said. this is the first time i have ever seen this. what is it, i asked genuinely concerned. your numbers tell me you will make money from war. i met her gaze steadily as i replied, i do. as an only child, growing up in the 1950s philadelphia, i

occupied myself with warrior fantasies. my imagination soared with visions of knights, kings and queens who populated the english history books i would get from the library. the dramatic tales of battles driven by focused energy and heightened danger excited me. it wasn't conquest i was after, it was the warriors' extraordinary sense of mission. i was moved by an empathetic connection with the absolutely potential and oppressed. i wanted to advantage great evil power to lead troops into battle for the most noble of causes. unfortunately, the world in which i was living allowed for few grand heroics. rather than a battleground, it was a special kind of wasteland. i grew up at a time when one's worth and acceptance as a female were measured by the width of a cent lin skirt -- cent lin skirt. when french kissing branded you

a sexual outlaw, and when little girls' dreams revolved around their weddings and lessons learned of watching the ritual of improving one's life with domestic conveniences. it was a vast wilderness of mothers, teachers and friends encircling me in a traditional femininity creating a suffocating loneliness that i could not name, nor understand. i felt powerless to change my fate until queen elizabeth i, whose story i discovered at anal anal -- age 10, finally broke that silence. her survival skills were legendary. her mother was beheaded when she was 3, her stepmother executed when she was 9, she was sexually molested at 15, and she spent two months imprisoned in a tower a hair's bred withth away from execution herself. she learned to carefully scan the political and emotional landscapes for signs of potential danger. she ruled 16th century england

by herself, refusing to marry or to bear children. the an dodge now strategies of this woman who wanted to be both king and queen of england were unheard of for a monarch of her time. i kept the lessons i learned from elizabeth close to my heart and my head when i broke free from philadelphia and came of age in new york city in the 1960s. the time was ripe to pick up her gauntlet and challenge women's traditional roles. i became a a child of one of the greatest social revolutions in history. at a time when it became politically possible for women to legally gain and exercise reproductive choice. the power of life and death. a time when the right to choose became the fundamental premise of the movement for women's liberation and when that expression of that truth was every woman's entitlement.

in 1971, two years before roe v. wade, i owned one of the first legal abortion clinics in the country and thrust myself into a world that came with battles to fight, replete with invasions, death threats and killings, opportunities for courage and heroism and the necessity for bold leadership, strategic thinking, philosophical debate and entrepreneurial skill. there were barbarians at the gate, self-identified as right-to-lifers. i call them anti-choicers or antis throughout this book, waving pictures of bloody fetuses and sometimes hiding bombs or guns under their coat. my sword was a six-foot coat hangar held high, high over my head as i declared my sisters would never return to back alley butchery. i raised a bull horn to rally fellow soldiers decrying the clinic violence that swept the

nation. this was my historic stage. it was a war, and i felt i was living my destiny. i helped midwife an era in which women came closer to sexual autonomy and freedom than ever before in history, the very idea that women could rise up and act in their own best interest electrified men and women alike during those years. and the foundational works of second wave feminists inspired millions of my peers. but my feminism didn't come from books or theoretical discussions. it came in the shape of individual women presenting themselves for services each day. i began to understand the core principle of feminism as i held the hands of thousands of women during their most powerful and vulnerable moments. their abortions. i wasn't immune to the physicality of abortion; the

blood, tissue and observable body parts. my political and moral judgments on the nature of abortion evolved throughout the years, but i quickly came to realize that those who deliver abortion services have not only the power to give women control over their bodies and lives, but also the power and the responsibility of taking life in order to do that. indeed, acknowledgment of that truth is the foundation for all the political and personal work necessary to maintain women's reproductive freedom. my story is the story of women's struggles for freedom and equality in the 20th century. but it is also a personal story of obstacles, survival and triumph. like elizabeth, i did not want to give birth to my successor. i never dreamed of being a mother, nursing a child, shaping a young life. i wanted, i needed to give birth

to myself. and in the arms of the women's movement, my delivery was aggressive, even violent at times, crushing and battering me as i reached for the freedom to become. most painful of all were my terrifying glimpses of the all-encompassing sense of being alone. whatever one can say glowingly about the women's liberation movement and our collective problems requiring collect i have solutions -- collective solutions, this fact cannot be denied: becoming is nothing if not a solo journey. thomas murton thought there was three vocations, one to the act of life, one to the contemplative and the third to a mixture of both. this book is the story of my mixed life. i am an activist, a philosopher, a transgressor of boundaries. i strive to live in truth or

perhaps truths. i have not escaped this war unscathed. like all women who have gone into battle, i am scarred. but perhaps that is the definition of wisdom. perhaps our wounds, the crevices and cracks in our innocence of perception that come as the price of experience, are our marks of understanding. so i've led and continued to lead an extraordinarily singular, singular life. and my journey started, um, in a very different place. and i got here almost serendipitously. i studied to be a concert pianist. i had musicians in my family, and my entire adolescence was spent practicing three, four, five hours a day or reading philosophy or history books. i never intended to go to college because it was

irrelevant to me. you know, great artists did not need that, so i graduated music and art, and i took myself off to study and starve, of course, because it was necessary for my romantic self-image, which i did, in paris and worked and practiced. and then i realized that music was, basically, too hermetic for me, you know? i wanted to engage more in the world, but i didn't know what i wanted or could do. so i came back to new york and, actually, realized that i should go to school. [laughter] so i hadn't taken the s.a.t.s, but when i was 22, i decided, well, i should. and i got into nyu and then i matriculated, and i started school to become a social psychologist. during this time, um, my father died, and i had no money to continue at nyu. so i took two or three jobs,

part-time jobs, to put myself through school. one of them was for a physician in rigo park named dr. martin gold, and i worked a few hours as a medical assistant. and this was in 1970, '69-'70. and i would take blood pressures and, you know, do all the things that medical assistants do. and at that time the abortion law changed, you know that the law changed in new york in 1970 which was three years prior to the supreme court decision in 1973. and dr. gold and a partner of his who were involved in h.i.p. wanted to provide abortion services for h.i.p. preskypers. and he walked, and he said, are you interested? i was totally, totally apolitical. i hadn't been aware of the feminism that was in the air, of the marchs, my head was in

philosophy and, you know, psychology. it was -- but i thought to myself, this is very interesting. it's pioneering, it's, you know, it's first time, and it's working with women and perhaps psychological skill could be helpful. so i said, yes, i'm in. so at that time we started a very small service, and the first patient i saw came from new jersey. and she came from new jersey because abortion was illegal in that state. prior to 1973. and she was white, she was married, she had a child, and she was totally incapable of having another because of the economic pressures on her. and that issue, the economic pressures, is one that has stayed constant as a variable for the reason that women need

and have to have abortions. and somebody said, well, go in and talk to her, counsel her. now, you have to understand there was no such thing as coming, there was no such concept as women's health. the world turned upside down. prior to 1970 in new york, abortion was a crime, a sin, a terrible mortal, horrible thing. and after 1970 women were lining up to have legal procedures. so it was a radical redefinition of reality. so i thought to myself, well, what do i say to her, what do i do? and all the theories that i had came flooding into my mind, but they went out as soon as i sat next to her. and i started to talk to her. and i don't remember what i said, but i do remember that i stayed with her throughout her abortion, i held her hand, and i will always remember that hand because it was that intimate, personal connection that moved

me so profoundly and catalyzed my entire life's work in that field. i mean, your rip d.c. had the quos where he said a woman is woman's natural ally. and in a sense i think that's what i felt at that point in time. i felt the power, the vulnerability and the responsibility. so that was my, my first patient. legal abortion split the world open to the realities of women's lives. it was that face-to-face connection that so drew me in. after a childhood spent largely alone, my heart was expanding to embrace others. there were poor women of every race, many of whom had numerous children. there were patients as young as 11 years old and as old as 45, patients who so much wanted to keep the pregnancy but could not, russian immigrant women with a history of multiple

abortions, college students and middle class, married women who never told their husbands. they all needed my help. the general ignorance regarding women's bodies, health and sexuality was astounding. many patients never had a gynecological exam. our bodieses ourselves, the influential women's health book published by the pioneering feminists at the boston's health collective, had not been published. the working and middle class women i worked with often believed all the old wives' tales about how one could get pregnant. ..

26, 27 and he said this is all very nice. this is all very good. but you have the patience on the table. they are already there. why would you put in and what iud? what are you saying? they haven't even come out of the procedure. we have them back after two weeks. we give them information. we want to talk to them no, no.

just put in the iud. i heard other stories from women that would come in and they were pregnant and they didn't want to be. my doctor told me to go off the hill and i got pregnant. my doctor told me i didn't have to restrict my diaphragm after my last delivery. so i began to see this extraordinary phenomenon that i named e. iatrogenic pregnancy which is pregnancy caused by the misinformation with the non-information of physicians. so, all i knew that doctors had a deep commitment to women in their reproductive health. they had seized firsthand the results of illegal abortion. most new whether abortion was legal or not they would move heaven nor earth to have one and often lose their lives in the process. but sometimes it was most

coveted of the physicians who were the most misogynist at so they never felt that way themselves. they were just doing what they had been taught in doubt that time being a male doctor mant being in charge in control of the interaction and the procedure. i began to grasp many of the good hearted middle doctors supporting the clinic didn't see the abortion in the context of a woman's right to control her reproduction. was more of a way to control women's messy complicated bodies. and often, this started early they were examined by doctors as soon as they got their periods, they had an examination often before they had intercorse and even then there was a shame and fear from the previous generation ministration, sex,

pregnancy, abortion, everything had to be explained by doctors. so what i began to think was women's health needed a reformation. we needed a reformation. 95 to translate language of medicine says that women would be able to make traces about their own health. as frederick douglass said power concedes nothing without a demand women had to begin to demand. women had to begin to have a concept of having rights. after having one of these stories i went back to my office. i sat down, pulled out my hand and began to write patients have right. the right to question your doctor, the right to know the background in affiliation of your doctor, the right to be advised of your medical treatment, the right not to be intimidated by medical props, fancy offices, big desks, etc.. the right to regard physicians in the medical the establishment

as a vehicle, as the resources. the right to know that rarely is there a single and changing medical truth. i still remember when the words patient power first came to me. for once i was the one on the exam table. i was having a routine gynecological exam, but i was feeling vulnerable and uncomfortable, but my legs spread, the paper barely covering my breast. just breathe in and read out and be patient, the doctor said while his hand searched and poked inside me. what an unbearable request. i never had much patience as a child or woman. i never wanted to wait for anything. the word patient originally referred to a sufferer or a victim, and older definition that shares meeting with the modern word of patients to

suffer and indoor. i was beginning to understand that women have always been the ultimate patients in this sense of the word. during centuries of injustice as we've waited for equal rights, economic power, suffrage freedom from violence and illegal abortion. there has always been something else. one more thing to be accomplished. a war to end at the election to win for the legal and political and social days can be turned towards women. so the days and the years go by and i write i can't remember how many hands i held, how many heads i have crest, how many times i whispered a will be all right, just a brief slowly. so much for nobody, legs spread wide apart the physicians between always heavy thighs.

it will be over soon take one more deep breath. the last poll of the counter than the goal that signaled the end of the abortion, they call it the uterine cry. it was the young girls that moved me the most. i felt rage against the meals that impregnated the child, was a father, a young boy with no conscious? i spent hours council and mothers who was furious their bader debate could daughters the trail needed a kind of sali couldn't give. let her get local anesthesia in a letter feel the pain so she knows never to do it again. the daughter's head lay on my shoulder as i sat on their bed wiping tears of relief, regret or both whispering comfort, giving a solution, channeling rage, sharing life.

i wanted to keep this pregnancy if only i learned that it is in the if only that the reality of abortion regards it's there in the vast expanse and experience. if only is the theme of a thousand variations. if only i wasn't 14. if only i was married. if only my husband had a job, if only i had a job, if only i wasn't 42, if only i wasn't 15. if only, if only. but the women that came to choice found a kind of redemption at the clinic facilitated by counselors and staff who didn't the value but supported them. redemption in the form of rescue from an unwanted and unplanned pregnancy and everything that they meant. redemption in the form of signification, and utilization and acceptance. so understand during all of this time, i was still not political.

in the sense of the word you would know me as today. i was doing the work and dealing with the women every day until 1976 when i became political coming and i remember it very distinctly. it was a sunday morning, and i was in bed a little longer as usual. and i heard something on the radio about henry hyde, republican henry hyde who passed a law against medicaid coverage for women who were having abortions, and he said if we can't save all the babies we can at least save them of the poor. these were the women i worked with every day. these were of the women whose stories i heard and whose hands are held, and this man was saying no more medicaid funding for abortion. you will have to fend for yourself. so i was amazed. what can i do about this?

this is unfair. it starts with a one a feeling this is on a fairer. this isn't right so i felt that after a powerfully, and again i went up and i took out my people and my tent and i said i will write something and i wrote a one page pamphlet about what the cutoff for the medicaid funds would mean for poor women, and what i did is i went to queens college where i graduated after i left am i you and i walked down cahal and i had my pamphlet with me and i was just knocking on the door and the professor would say may i help you? yes, i want to come in and address the students. they said fine. and i stood there and i said to them this is egregious republican congressman henry hyde has done and what we felt in the death of women, poor women will suffer.

poor women will die. this is queens college and they are mainly white middle class kids, and the reaction was quite extraordinary. i can always go -- i go to puerto rico or london. if they cut off abortion now i will always manage and there was such an extraordinary lack of political empathy. it was amazing to me. there is no understanding that what happens to the poorest of women in the situation happens to all of us. so, again i said what can i do? i can debate. i learned that very well at my parents' dinner table. i actually got somebody that helped me on multiple different shows and i went around the country alone, and i would just go up against these antichoices,

and my favorite one of course which i will share with you is the reverend, what's his name, the moral majority, yes, jerry falwell. this was in detroit, and at one point he looked at me and he said ms. hoffman, how many abortions did your facility due last year? and i looked at him probably and i said reverend, we did 9,000 procedures because to my mind, that was a sign of all the good work that i was doing. but in his mind was mass murder and he said 9,000, you're saying you did 9,000 abortions? yes, reverend. hal will you feel when you meet your neighbor with the blood of 9,000 babies on your hand and i said referent, when i meet her i

will be proud to tell her i fought for women's rights. [applause] and he said her? [laughter] i said yes. he said are you saying that god is a woman? i am saying no, reverend, i'm saying beyond gender. this is a concept it was difficult -- [laughter] i had many debates and they all come down to a very similar argument where very many of the anti-choice people would say well, women don't really know what abortion is. they would never do it if they knew. they really don't know. this whole feeling of women not able to have this moral agency. and of course women had no, they

know very well and they make those decisions, and i am reminded of a 19-year-old patient who came in and it was her first abortion, and she said to me you know, the mother in me wanted so much to have this come to love it come to see it grow. but the other part knows it is impossible. and i thought about that very deeply, the other part. it's like the other mother and i can to the conclusion that really profoundly deeply abortion is a mother sat. one of deep moral significance and one that i myself made. i return to new york that summer for a nationally televised debate of the prominent anti-choice leader. i was anxious, tremendously concerned that i should win tbi ander stood one can never really convert the other side.

the dates served every articulate the issue on an ever higher level. my debate was taped on a friday. i take in the pregnancy test that morning fleecing choices. my with period as a couple weeks lead and i was worried. i was always so careful but no method of control was ever perfect. as the debate progressed on experienced splitting off. i responded to the questions of my upon and all the while thinking that i could be pregnant. i felt removed enough to appreciate the irony of my situation. a battle being waged on multi-track. i was performing publicly for the camera us and debating emotionally with myself. my opponent asked me how i could pull myself a feminist and support abortion rights when half the fetus is being aborted or female. it is not a new argument.

none of it was. but it made me think of my mother. my mother whose dreams were deferred and denied. in the closing argument, i made a passionate plea for the importance of women's lives for remembering that the abortion issue is ultimately about that. thousands of and it will stories, thousands of different reasons all culminating in one shared and busy reality that i was beginning to enter. mine ayittey entry from that night reads for one night i am a mother. i don't remember whether or not i slept. i only remember my exhaustion and overriding sense of inevitability. the next morning i just carefully in a red and white suit. what does one wear to ann abortion. there are no traditional costumes like those for funerals and weddings. there was no ritual from one generation of women to one other to look to as a guide.

there are only functional considerations. you wear something that comes on and off very easily. after my abortion as i slowly awoke from the anesthesia, i became conscience of an immense and overwhelming feeling of not specifically long directed love, relief and sadness. a few days later walking down the hallway i heard a 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 real and gently tried to soothe her. as i bent down to her face she whispered in a halting russian accent you're the only 1i have now. i'm so alone. you saved my life just by being here. i held her close, the enormously moved savoring the connection. there was no good or bad. no issue of choice.

there was no survival of doing what they had done throughout history. what they will do forever. again, it is now april 1988 and operation rescue comes to new york. operation rescue was led by randall terry, and they began to call a righteous peaceful uprising of god-fearing people across the country that will inspire politicians to correct the law and make child killing illegal. and he says if we don't end this holocaust very soon, the judgment is god is going to fall on this nation. i led the pro-choice coalition in a very strong offensive that kicked off with a march and a rally and made it very clear about women's rights were going

to be protected. but there was a process it seemed we couldn't get our message across. so i and members of the coalition decided we would do in action and that would spread over the country. that's the world we were really going to make our point and we were going to make it at st. patrick's cathedral is the cardinal of the time had actually met with randall terry, and we felt that he gave support to the terrorist tactics so we created a wonderful part like martin luther come hell up on the door of the cathedral, read it aloud. people can across the steppes, they sat down and refuse to move when the police came and nine people were arrested. this was the first pro-choice civil disobedience in history and the papers that claimed the

movement has shifted course, a new direction for the pro-choice forces, and i thought yes, this is it now. but unfortunately, that did not have been at that time. but i do want to read and share with you what we read in a proclamation. of the points that we made. if i consider it a woman's love reproductive rights and the first thing we said, women are full moral agents with the right and ability to choose when and whether or not they will be others. abortion is a trace made by each a detachable for profound personal reasons that no man or state showed judge. the right to make reproductive choices is the legacy throughout history and it belongs to every woman regardless of age, class, religion or sexual preference. abortion is a life affirming act chosen within the context of

women's reality, women's lives and women's sexuality. abortion is often the most moral choice in a world that frequently denies health care, housing, education and economic survivalno in the 90's i startee a great many russian immigrant women. i mentioned them before. at that time there was absolutely no birth control available in the former soviet union. women were coming in with five, six come seven abortions and a very little shock as you can imagine the work that i do i see very much of reality in the hard side but this shocked me and of the counselors can love and said there is a woman here for her father the fifth abortion and i found that absolutely extraordinary but this was a

very understandable situation in an environment where any birth control laws in possible. degette very heavy condoms. there were no pills. the only way to control one's fertility was by having multiple abortions. so once again i go up to my office and think i've got to do something about it and i have to say i had my most intense rescue fantasy at this point in time. i decided i was going to save all of russian women. i was going to save them from this awful repression because obviously choice was and what we were talking about when there are no options and the only option available we are not talking about freedom of choice we are talking about oppression of the most terrible kind so i

managed to get an invitation to the hospital number 53, and i went over with 11 of my staff. i took a lot of birth control, and i attended to and almost got to the point i was going to start choices east, this great venture to finally have a feminist center in moscow, and unfortunately because the criminal activity and what happened in the different negotiations, we didn't really get to be able to open, but the seeds were planted and that is an extraordinary thing and i was also attacked by the alternative of the kgb in the papers and i found that very pleasing because i've always said one must be judged by the power of your enemies so my list was growing.

but with that experience taught me is the comparative history is really the history of power relations between the state and their female population when stalin made abortion illegal he did that to populate russia to fight the germans and meanwhile they have a boarded their fee and a defeat of fetuses could be punished with death penalty. the battle was different but the war is always the same. i started with a quote he says if you put a gun on wall and the first act, you must use it to buy the third.

he was shot three times in the back by michael griffin as he was arriving at a pensacola abortion clinic in march of 1993. don't kill any more babies before gunning the doctor down. he was the first provider to be killed in the war against abortion. when i heard the national coalition of abortion providers was ranging the memorial service the service was held in an amphitheater of the clinic given the florida weather i found it odd that they were wearing a turtleneck sweater and a day long dark raincoat. only after a few minutes of looking at her carefully and noticing that she appeared rather boxy did it occur to me she was wearing a bulletproof vest. upon my return to new york learned that rachel shannon an anti-abortion activist had been convicted of attempted murder in which a lot kansas after she

admitted to shooting though not fatally dr. george tiller. he was a friend of mine and for many years i referred the women to his clinic but we couldn't serve the choices. he always wore a bulletproof vest and drove to work in an armored car and he survived that attack. he wouldn't be so lucky in 2009. dr. wayne patterson the owner of the abortion clinics one of the few physicians to perform abortions in pensacola area was killed as he returned to his car. on july 29, 1994 in pensacola the reverend paul hill pumped three shotgun blasts into the head of dr. john killing both him and his clinic escorts. six months later to a clinic workers were murdered. shannon at planned parenthood and deanne nichols.

this was a tremendously different situation. people, doctors, clinic workers were being killed. this is that a theoretical discussion, this was a hot war and the doctors hadn't signed up for it when they first began to perform abortions they were viewed as progressives are maverick. now they were living in a constant state of post-traumatic stress and in the attack on the other provider struck fear and terror which is what they wanted. so the gun was on wall. there were discussions on the pro-choice movement. are you ready to use it? i purchased a 20 gauge shotgun at a small shop at the main street to keep at home for self protection. i shot at the woods behind and long before, a neighbor noticed

the noisette call the police. a daily news journalist got wind from the police slaughter and ruda under the headline make her a. if you notice the right-to-life crowd sitting in front of the traces women medical center maybe it is because the abortion clinics president just purchased a shotgun. there was a negative reaction from some of my feminist colleagues, especially one of my editors who said gloria will be very upset. [laughter] a feminist with a gun? it was politically incorrect. well, the years went on. the battle still rages. over 110 antilegislative attempts on the verge of losing her clinic in mississippi which will be known as the first

non-of fortune free state i'd call it the first slave state because women cannot control their reproduction they are not full citizens. i do want to end with the way that i began as the first patient with another patient that i write out. a hindu woman 18 weeks pregnant came into traces with her husband and sons seeking an abortion she had to ensure there were no fetal of maladies and there was nothing wrong with her fetus. why why is she here? what was her reason for wanting this abortion? i felt as if within her in the primal birth defect carried. i looked at her son's holding on to her with demanding hammes.

i felt rage that was my gender the was the least wanted and despair that over this act was a total denigration denial and evaluation of the female principals from the female self i so much wanted to say no, stop, you should not. not you cannot, but you should not. even as they waged against her choice, understood why she had to make it. she had left india but india is where she lived with her heart and her head. the decision to make what in her mind was the only rational and intelligent choice that resulted in an ambivalent type of freedom to have the minimum chance of survival and naturalization she must deny and negate her own gender but it is for this very fundamental civil right of

reproductive freedom that i have put my life on the line many times. without it, we will never have a world where being female isn't considered a birth defect. where women do not have to have 36 abortions or forbidden having one to eight how long will women have to wait? we have to wait as long as it takes to bring that women's equality we will have to wait for people of constant to create a society where choice truly exists not one where economic deprivation, racism, sexism or despair dictates the outcome of pregnancy. thank you. [applause]

[applause] i would love to take questions, comments, the dates [inaudible] >> plan b is a necessary option. it should be available, should be legal and should be available to women. people are listening and watching to understand that the attack on womens' reproductive freedom is not only about abortion, it really is about birth control and women's sexuality and how and why and when we use and how we use our bodies and our economy so

there's been a great deal of funding cuts for contraception, planned parenthood has been under severe attack and in the paper wrote a few years back and i reissue in discuss at the national press club we call abortion economics i talk about how the recession is impacting so heavily on the women, middle class and poor people and their reproductive choices have so many women don't even have the funds available to get contraceptives and to plan their family. so it is a situation. they are very prone italy and it's very impossible. it becomes impossible. that's why it is so important to have a patient power, to have women's power and women rise up and demand these services.

>> i read the friday and sunday times today there was a story about and there was a young girl that became pregnant at the age of 16 and she wanted to get a high school diploma and she's single and she has no money to come to new york so she had it in the state i don't know whether it was wisconsin or wyoming or what command she is now being charged with murder and facing ten years in jail. >> she took medical abortion over the internet and this is a complicated case but it's good

that you bring it up because it's quite extraordinary. this is a woman that tried to assault of court because she couldn't access an abortion provider where she lived and she is being charged with criminal homicide. i want to make clear abortion is still legal everywhere in this country. roe v waistbands. but what is happening is it's becoming and has become impossible for almost the majority of women living in the majority of states. 93% of the counties in this country have no abortion per fight pravachol. -- provider at all. >> cahal it's illegal to go over 21 weeks. the abortion was legal, it was illegal to get the drug over the internet to take it herself and to do it in a second trimester.

so that is where all of the nuances you find. that's why i say where we will stand most probably the the state's are where the battle is now. the states. >> we've never had a conversation about the subject at all and i want to say i feel like i'm one of the luckiest people in the world. i grew up in effect under york and i graduated in 1969 at 16-years-old when i was 15 a black friend of mine got pregnant and i didn't know what to do to help her. i went to a teacher at the school and asked him for his help and he had a friend that was a physician in new york and arranged a abortion for her to read the was 1968 peaden 69i go to the high school and i had a boyfriend and was sleeping with

him and using condoms and thankfully i didn't get pregnant and my mother went to that for me and i went to a clinic to ask for birth control pills and was denied because i was too young and of course my boyfriend was overage and could have been prosecuted -- could have been prosecuted for statutory. so my mother signed a document and i got birth control and i never got pregnant except when i wanted to. i had two children. i was a woman's counselor at a free clinic in cleveland and helped by other women. it was a nightmare looking to cleveland in the 70's and i went to some kind of feminist group where we were investigating judge - -- >> there is a self-help group around this time led by carroll

del mar and it's a very powerful theoretical idea that women in order to control our own reproduction and bodies we have to know ourselves first, so there was the idea of looking at one's vagina and i know that word is not supposed to be said that yes, looking at once vagina understanding one's production even perhaps doing at that point in time menstrual extraction. it's important that we have these abilities. it's good that you had a mother like that. not all mothers are like that. speaking of being a mother i do want to say that i had my abortion of 32 and when i was 58i decided to adopt a child and was the best decision i've made. my daughter is here tonight 50

per to me because i realize being a mother is a very profound and a wonderful thing if you want it and if you are ready. >> i have two beautiful children with a horrible man i went through custody litigation and they are not speaking to me at the moment they will come back to me i know it. i got pregnant about ten years later with a man who had a 10%, graduated 56 of five covered 57 my class i was third in the class and he has been honorably discharged as a vietnam veteran because of post-traumatic stress disorder. i immediately had an abortion. no questions asked, didn't bat an eyelash and i knew how important it was to have a child. i was on medicaid at the time and they did not pay but i had a

private abortion in a physician's office and the man -- >> thank you for that story. >> anybody have any questions or comments? >> [inaudible] >> i think everybody is aware that when he fight for social justice and particularly for women's rights and particularly for abortion rights in this country at this time, you are stepping on dangerous ground. i'm not saying that the entire anti-choice movement is to

restore radical in that sense or far from it, but a lot of the language. it does activate people who can become violent. indeed there are people outside of the choices every saturday who scream you are murdering your baby. if they are black and they say you were disagreeing the legacy of martin luther king. so, what do you do? well, i keep working. i keep going. i and vigilant, but i am aware that at any point in time something can happen. but that's the risk that we all have to take. one has to live with courage. >> i do have a question [inaudible]

>> there is a lot of -- women told of their own stories and experienced it is to terminate a pregnancy within their own experiential lives. as time went on, then narrative started to codify. there was pro-life and pro-choice, and this and i -- i won't even call what pro-life this narrative really had power, and it was good mothers don't kill their babies. abortion is murder. you can do better. you don't have to have this abortion. so, all of this propaganda, and i call it propaganda has sifted into women's heads. what is a portion? it is a moral decision. you can't say that the choice is wonderful horrible. it's a choice that each individual woman makes within her own heart and mind and her

family in her life circumstances but the guilt is to a great extent culturally conditioned. i will not say that women don't feel guilty, that women don't feel regret. but regret is part of life. many women myself included feel very good about the abortion and don't have any guilt at all. >> if one wants to get into the freudian psychology -- in other words if i say i've made a moral choice, which i feel firm and strong to have this abortion you're saying you are really denying or psychological issues because you feel very guilty is that what you're telling me?

>> [inaudible] fines glad that he has so much experience with this. okay. well, you know -- >> i just wanted to say that in fact right after abortion became a legal i was living in new york at that time. i was in california.

the overwhelming sentiment who now for the first time could control their own lives and their own destinies were relieved they could get their lives back. but they wanted to get on with the life they had and that is and the antiabortionists do not consider the life -- bravely and unequivocably support women's rights to make their own productive choices. beyond the base of the opposition and taking your life into your hands and let's be clear this is something that you've said, too that without

providers, there is no choice without providers without the people that go up against all this. how do you and this comes back to a question i think you have addressed. this comes to the people that want to totally control and limit women's lives. >> why so profoundly believe that it is so unfair it is agreed just, it is not right that women's lives matter women have a moral ability to choose what's best for them and their children that they have and the children that they will have and how their the church, how dare the state, how dare the men in black or white robes tell me for men with ph these tell me what

to do with my body and my life. it is such -- it goes back i wrote a piece at one point in time i talked about children begin natural resistance fighters because they grow up and they start to say no. and i think that as i grew up and said that word and felt the opposition to my own well i became stronger and stronger, so i couldn't imagine a life where i didnt stand up for what i believed. i couldn't imagine it. >> i completely agree with what you say that women have the right to control their own bodies but the people who insist they come to terms of arkansas and brimley with the fetus they are not concerned with the child

are the means to bring it up there are so many times in so many communities they don't know what to do with it. >> because she isn't working she goes to work and then -- >> this is what happens when a utopian -- from the ground up

and there is pulled netz in the politics that says no, you know, a group no matter what their gestation who really has to take priority over a woman's life. there is something in mind radically wrong with that and that is why i have to continue to say no, it won't. >> i have another question. have you ever challenge to the father's and do they have a right to know and make a decision? >> yes, a lot of my patients come in with partners and their mothers or their husbands. i really would hope that any woman who is considering having a termination would discuss any woman she is involved with. i would hope that their intimacy went further than the asset quality and that they could talk to each other. so yes, obviously i would think

that they should be involved. but never to have veto power. discuss it, talk about it, support it. but ultimately it has to be our choice. >> outpatient abortion is the safest medical procedure there is. there are almost a million abortions a year. the morbidity rate is minimal compared to other outpatient procedures. it's extraordinary, and childbirth is nine times more dangerous than the abortion, but you don't see them going out and screaming let's get parental consent for anyone who wants to have a child. they don't say that.

it's done in a sterile environment is extremely quick, safe procedure done in a back alley in the garbage area that's the point that's why i've always held that up as the icon, and i did a back alley press conference where i stood in the back alley and i said i'm lookin my future and the future of american women if these obstructionist laws are passed. >> many of the battles the ever raised over the years tend to be in several industries does this shift when you see female politicians who are speaking out against women's rights and

against the rights to have health care and abortion? >> does it shift? no it just gets more dangerous. you see people talk about having more women in politics. it's not just the gender, it's the consciousness. it's very, very sad when i have to debate so many women and i respect some of the women id date. i know they believe what they believe and they're standing up for their principles also. but i find it really agree just that women would actually want to criminalize a procedure for other women. you know, you can be really anti-abortion. you can stand and very strongly say i will never have one. find that is a pro-choice position. you don't have to pay it you see, the problem comes when you want to criminalize your believe for the rest of the female population. that is the problem.

>> [inaudible] >> i thought about it, i thought about it, and unfortunately maybe for some people but not for myself i would not even want to consider it because of what i consider the corruption, the money, the fact that i don't believe that i could be true to my principles and compromise in the way the would be productive for the country. i think that the partisanship has become toxic at this point in time. and i think that being in a social movement and of writing and speaking like this once you have influence in other ways and i hope i've moved all of you and i touched your hearts and i hope you think about this more deeply and become active in any way that you can.

we are at a very dangerous point in the history of the struggle. >> [inaudible] we have a very visually aggressive anti-choice presence out there standing out there on saturday mornings, and i would be a great way to be a foot soldier and a worrier in this battle. aside from that i know not everybody can get at 6 o'clock in the morning on saturday. i know that, but i think another thing that is so important for women to own this issue there are so many women that have had abortions that are unable to say it, unable to talk about it, unable to accept and opponent, so i think it is also a very

courageous act and i would ask you all to think about that, too. >> helm do they recruit people? >> recruit doctors or are you talking about -- >> well, you know, many of the doctors that started in the early days of our calling them now dinosaurs. a lot of them are retiring and getting a lot older and the medical schools are not teaching either contraception or abortion. there is a group called medical students for choice that works very well to train young people to go out into the reproductive health field. but there are very few providers. again the anti-choice movement has been very successful minimizing the amount of

providers available because they made it seem that providing abortions, having abortions, thinking about an abortion, saying you've had an abortion is something very morally and egregious, and this is something that i really always talk about and i want to stress tonight that the decision is a moral decision and women of our moral agents when they make it. >> no other questions? >> at what age do you think girls should be exposed to understanding what abortion is.

you know, this becomes a personal issue for me because i have a child here and -- yes, i pity the the issue, yes, there is an issue of sex education. i would like to see intimacy education. i would like to see love education. i think there is far too much sex education and culture as it is. i think it's important for parents to be open with their children. i try to be open with mine. i think that the ages right and a child asks a question. that is the point in time they are ready to hear the answer and that ferries with each child. >> [inaudible] there's the whole issue of the

language and so forth. how do you do that? >> how do you say the word abortion and not having the crushing historical religious and social approach fall on your head as you say it? it's difficult. you're very correct the anti-choice movement has a cyclical what did the language and why is that? because the price movement hasn't been as effective and hasn't been as proactive as the need to be and they should be. it's a matter of abortion is a terrible thing then somebody else will say nobody would really want to have an abortion. sometimes you do want to have an abortion. sometimes it is necessary.

>> [inaudible] senate he wasn't able to have a child for [inaudible] [laughter] >> built is a great motivator is a great conclude for many women. we feel guilty about not being skinny enough for a variety enough about. we feel guilty enough about not feeling guilty. women are confused with delta and when it comes to being mothers and what a good mother is and should be. it's important to deconstruct and critical look at this language and what the messages are.

>> do you think there is one or to organizations that are pro-choice. if there is a lot of them now. they've been around a great many years and function sometimes as bureaucratic institutions. ayman activist. i like to see people in the streets and creative activity occupy the language occupied the thinking and this isn't going to be happening through organizations or institutions. this has to happen with each and every one of us. >> is occupy wall street doing anything? >> i think they started a

feminist discussion. but what is doing anything? as the laws pass and women are criminally prosecuted and more and more providers are going down, doing anything has to grow up to mean doing everything. we have to do everything in our power to stop this relentless attack. we've got to do everything. we can't -- [applause] but i am just one person. yes? [inaudible] >> the question is have i ever encountered someone who is ambivalent. yes, very often. which is why the choice is i have a prenatal service because i didn't want to have a medical

facility that only did abortions as i call myself choices. i didn't want to physically say to women that enter there is only one choice you can make here. so every patient is counseled. we have a very well-trained freakin' pashtun net and feminist social workers who speak to the women and if somebody is indolent we can definitely say you can have your prenatal care, you can have your baby. i am not selling abortions. they are deeply, deeply talking about choice and morrill agency and women's fundamental rights. so, i in my own clinic have those actions and we also work with women who want their children for adoption so whatever the choice we are there to help them.

>> who will speak for the fetus? >> will you? >> yes, i will. >> gough, speak for it. [laughter] >> i'm not as eloquent as you are and i don't want to be compared with your eloquence, but i think when a woman has an abortion she is attacking herself and she's in danger in her health. she's not doing a good thing for herself, and a lot of us wouldn't be here if our parents had aborted and there's also the chance the leonardo da vinci was afforded. >> this is an question.

>> at alisa fer is not because they don't have enough people the entire anti-choice movement speaks for the fetus. the fetus has a good constituency. a good advocate out there. and the point of the matter is that the woman has to make that choice. it is a potential life, yes. but the woman's life takes precedence. >> the woman can abstain from having intercourse. you don't say anything about that. why not? sec'y not talking about abstinence. that's a birth control method. >> a 16-year-old girl, 15-year-old girl, and married a

girl, with is out whoring around. >> that's me, that's what i was. >> you have a very specific philosophy about sex and the role of women and reproduction. i respect it. you may have it but you're not going to leave that on me or any other american woman and i will do everything in my power to make sure that you don't. [applause] shall be in on that? [applause] thank you. you are watching

>> david, how old was she when she killed herself? ki >> she was 26. her >> why did she kill herself?aid >> because, well, she left aat suicide note that said that she was distraught the president grandfather stanley dunham's grandmother. >> guest: she lived only to be 26 and because of that dramatic, stanley and his older brother moved back to old eldorado and a character named christopher columbus clark that fought in the civil war. >> host: where did the grandparents meet? >> guest: they met in augusta which is about 12 or 15 miles

away both in butler county sort of on the way to wichita and that is where she grew up. stand had already been out of high school for several years and matalin was a senior in high school. he was working in construction and renovation and that's where he met her. >> host: what was that life like in kansas? >> guest: their life before or after? after they are married it was sort of her parents didn't really like him or the first thing that her father had was dark skinned and an element of race even in that and she married him secretly before she ridgely the from high school she was a very smart young woman who had always been on the honor roll until she met stanley who was slick talking out of arkansas, kansas, and sorry, and that's what she wanted.

she had grown and the sophistication of hollywood and stan promised something else he promised to take her back there and then they are somewhat unstable. not the marriage was necessarily on stable but the jobs were always unstable and they never knew where they were going next said it was a rocky road. >> host: where did the obama clan began? >> guest: it began actually in sudan. i would start the story in the small village by lake victoria to the south and east of the major city in the province which

was a very poor part of kenya. it's where the little tribe is basically center the second referred largest tribe in africa and the about where the obama's found themselves. >> host: on the president's paternal side where the grandparents? >> guest: he was born in the late 1800's and was in the first wave to be westernized they had come out and he learned english and became sort of inculcated into the british culture so he worked later as a chef and cut for many british military people

and folks in nairobi and the mother came from another village in that area, and she did not -- he was a very difficult guy to live with. he had several why of this and when he moved to the area near where she grew up it was back to another home state of the clan around lake victoria. she had enough. she had a younger wife along with him and so she ran away. she left the family when barack obama, the president's father was a very little boy. >> david maraniss his

grandparents died in 2006. did president obama ever meet him? >> guest: no, he never met after the 1980's after his grandfather had died. aside from the very early days of his birth but he didn't get back to kenya until both of his grandparents were gone so there's a dramatic difference in that part of the story. >> for barack obama the story how many interviews did you do over the course of the last four years? >> guest: i would say almost 400, and i had a wonderful assistant who helped with some of the leader interviews in the story but i traveled all over the world and so everybody could find in every part of the life of president obama and his

parents and grandparents. >> host: barack obama sr. was born in 1936. what was his childhood like? >> guest: from a fairly early age he was dealing with western culture in the british. he was a very smart kid. his father was difficult to get along with and was not often there mostly in the nairobi and he was growing up. he was lucky in the sense that he was smart enough to get into a very good school in that area, and although he never totally finished he was a very smart student. they had that clash of old and new. for all of his youth and

adolescence he was in a colonial country in a very poor part of the kenya, so he lived in the mud huts with cowles and no television and stuff like that. a century behind in some ways and get kenya was starting to emerge. the rebellion was beginning, the push for independence was beginning and the generalization he was a part of that. >> host: how long were you in kenya and what did you see? what was it like to be over there? >> guest: kenya was one of the great experiences of my life. every day was unforgettable. we were there for about two

study of bobby jones and was about the 1913 u.s. open and reeves just like a novelist and a wonderful writer and i just finished the new novel sofer who writes brilliant novel about an israeli agent and i've also read three books this summer by a new novelist who just writes about an american agent agent so some of the late trading on the effort.