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Merle Hoffman, who opened a clinic providing abortions before theybecame legal across America, talks about her career as a battle."This is a full-frontal war on women and I've been in this war forover 40 years. I've seen it change its tactics it was aguerrilla war, then my friend Tiller [ abortion provider Dr George Tiller] was killed. The only thing that amazedme when it started this time round was how open it was, it used tobe a subtle attack, but now it's very direct." Few would argue that abortion rights are under ferocious attack inthe US, nearly 40 years after the landmark Roe v Wade supreme court decision made abortions legal across all states.Activism by groups such as Americans United for Life led to a record-breaking number of bills in the US restricting abortionaccess last year , and more this year, according to Guttmacher Institute forreproductive health. These proposals, which include women being made to have a transvaginal ultrasound before an abortion, are a step too far for Hoffman, who startedone of the first legal clinics in New York, Choices , in 1971 and who has chosen this year to publish a personal andhighly charged memoir. "I believe that the power of the state has to stop at my skin andif that same power is going to come in through the medical providerI have to access in order to exercise my constitutional rightthat's a really unacceptable situation," Hoffman says, shaking herhead in her office in Jamaica, Queens, a poor neighbourhood closeto New York's JFK Airport. In the room with us there is a giant coathanger, a nod to theback-alley abortions that bedevilled the illegal industry and aprop Hoffman has taken to marches outside cathedrals ever sincesetting up Choices. Throughout the 1970s and 80s, a time when shealso set up the feminist magazine On the Issues , she was shown in newspaper photos standing on podiums wieldingher hanger. She calls the hanger a "realistic icon of the future ofmillions of women if in fact anti-choice forces get their way"because "women will always choose to end pregnancies that theycan't have". Hoffman, who is little known outside the US, writes in the bookabout giving up her dream of becoming a concert pianist afterworking in a doctor's surgery to pay for university. "It allstarted with the first patient and how profoundly moving it wasfor me to hold her hand, to be with her and to share thatexperience. That she came in such a crisis and within a few hoursshe could go out and return to her life as she knew it. That was anextraordinarily powerful thing for me." Hoffman's book, Intimate Wars, details her own decision to have anabortion as a young woman, as well as her decision at 58 to adopt adaughter, her experience running Choices, her role in the feministmovement and her affair with a married doctor she worked with. Shealso talks about her fellow abortion providers being killed and thedeath threats she received, from the 1979 firebomb that destroyedher friend Bill Baird's clinic in Long Island, New York, to thearound 178 staff who have received death threats since 1977, to thewomen who stand outside her clinic saying to patients: "Don't killyour baby." Talking about her safety, Hoffman says: "In the early 90s I hadarmed guards for three months because of the threats. Now, I'mcareful and vigilant but this is the work. Of course it's toughto be under consistent and relentless attack, and sometimes I wouldbe depressed and want to give it all up. But it's like a marriage,I always came home, and home was the work." Despite threats, the clinic became a huge success and Hoffman wasfor a time the only female owner of a licensed abortion facility inNew York. As the clinic became profitable, the fact that Hoffmanmade money from the endeavour raised eyebrows. Today, Hoffman is well-off butthe clinic still provides healthcare at reasonable prices and thereis a system to provide on-the-spot care for women on Medicaid andhelp for illegal immigrants. The new younger feminist movement,which is battling this relentless attack against women (includingthe recent Unite Against the War on Women marches ), excites her. "It's beginning again, the recapitulation of a very vibrant, activewomen's movement. Young women are really saying we want to takeback the definition of what our sexuality is and what our rightsare. I think that America's women the young and veterans of thefeminist movement have been awakened to the threat that this isabout every woman, it affects all of us," she says. At currentrates, one in three women in the US will have an abortion before the age of 45. Hoffman believes that the biggest obstacle women have to overcomeis to believe they are in charge of their own personal decisionsabout motherhood. She loves being a mother, and says it hascommitted her more deeply to women's right to choose. She argued onBBC Radio 4 Women's Hour recently that between the church, thestate and a woman, there is only one person who should decide whenor whether or not a woman should be a mother. "The abortion issue is a tremendously nuanced and complicated one.It brings up so many different parts of how we see ourselves in theworld and in society, life, the meaning of life. That's why it hasto be so profoundly personal. Women are the only ones ultimatelythe decision has to rest with them." Intimate Wars: The Life and Times of the Woman who Brought Abortionfrom the Back Alley to the Boardroom by Merle Hoffman is published by The Feminist Press. 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