Merle Hoffman founded CHOICES Women’s Medical Center in 1971, shortly after New York State made abortion legal and two years before the historic Roe v. Wade Supreme Court decision that legalized abortion nationwide. Since then, Choices, under Merle’s active direction, has expanded from its pioneering and continuing abortion services to meet the full reproductive needs of the many communities it serves.
This includes comprehensive gynecological services, a full prenatal program, and specialized care for LGBTQ and gender-nonconforming, people, teens and seniors. These programs include Counseling and HIV/STD Testing and Treatment and basic preventive care.
Health education is an integral and important part of our mission, and Choices offers no-cost classes and workshops to public and private schools, community, and health organizations. To promote women’s health in the United States and abroad, Merle Hoffman founded the Choices Global Institute of Healing and Education, a charitable organization that raises public awareness about women’s health issues and provides support to underserved women and their families.
The name, “Choices,” stands for Creative Health Organization for Information, Counseling and Educational Services, and for more than 50 years it has proven to be just that.
© 2024 CHOICES Institute of Women's Health, Inc.
A Note About Our Use of Language: CHOICES understands and respects that not every person with the capacity for pregnancy identifies as a woman. We respect each individual’s gender identity, expression, and experience, and desire to be helpful and compassionate to all who need information about abortion or support. As an expression of this concern, CHOICES initiated the first Trans Health Care Program in New York State in 2016. While we do make an effort to use gender-inclusive language (person/people/they/them/patient) throughout our website, we do of course use woman/women/girls. We do so in order to acknowledge the long history of gender discrimination targeting women, the specialized health care that we provide, our experience with hundreds of thousands of women using our services and the biological reality that only people with uteruses are biologically capable of become pregnant and carrying a fetus.
CHOICES Institute of Women’s Health, Inc. is organized and operated exclusively for charitable purposes within the meaning of Section 501(c) (3) of the Internal Revenue Code | Website & SEO By: Partners For Choice