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A Transformative Gift from a Women’s Health Pioneer

By Laura Micham, Merle Hoffman Director, Sallie Bingham Center for Women’s History and Culture

Merle Hoffman

Twelve years after working with the Rubenstein Library’s Sallie Bingham Center to establish a leading collection of women’s health clinic records, women’s health pioneer Merle Hoffman has pledged $1 million to endow the Center’s directorship, which now bears her name. Hoffman intends her gift “to continue to support the visionary efforts by Duke University to honor and document the many courageous women who have fought their own ‘intimate wars’ in the long struggle for reproductive justice. I hope that the Bingham Center will become the bridge between theory and practice that will catalyze future generations to joyfully go further and deeper in the continual battles for women’s equality.”

Hoffman founded one of the first ambulatory surgical centers for women in 1970. Choices Women’s Medical Center has become one of the largest and most comprehensive women’s medical facilities in the U.S. Hoffman placed her papers and Choices’ records at the Bingham Center in 2000. Hoffman is the publisher and editor-in-chief of On the Issues Magazine. Her autobiography, Intimate Wars: The Life and Times of the Woman Who Brought Abortion from the Back Alley to the Board Room, was published in January 2012 by The Feminist Press. Hoffman visited the Rubenstein Library in February to read from Intimate Wars before an engaged audience.

Thanks in part to generous gifts made by Hoffman over more than a decade of collaborating with the Bingham Center, the Center holds a large body of works documenting four centuries of political activity surrounding women’s reproductive health. In addition to personal papers and organizational records, the collection includes books, pamphlets, zines, newsletters and other periodicals, as well as ephemera such as brochures, fliers, posters, buttons, and t-shirts.

Merle Hoffman - RL Magazine


Mending (2011) - Sallie Bingham

Sallie Bingham’s Mending: New & Selected Stories spans a career of fifty years, ranging from the fecund Kentucky of her youth to the stark landscapes of New Mexico. On March 14, Bingham was welcomed back to the Rubenstein Library to read selections from this volume and discuss her current project, The Blue Box: Three Lives in Letters. The new work is based on letters and other papers documenting her maternal forebears—whose lives provide a fascinating window into American and women’s history.


 

These articles appear courtesy of the Rubenstein Library, Duke University. They appeared in Issue I Volume I (Summer 2012) of RL Magazine magazine, published twice yearly by the David M. Rubenstein Rare Book & Manuscript Library, Duke University Libraries, Durham, NC.

The full issue is available for viewing online or downloading from Duke University.

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Watch Sallie

Taken By The Shawnee

Taken By The Shawnee

July 6th, 2025
Sallie Bingham introduces and reads from her latest work, Taken by the Shawnee.
Visiting Linda Stein

Visiting Linda Stein

March 3rd, 2025
Back on October 28th, 2008, I visited artist Linda Stein's studio in New York City and tried on a few of her handmade suits of armor.

Listen To Sallie

Rebecca Reynolds & Salie Bingham at SOMOS

Rebecca Reynolds & Salie Bingham at SOMOS

November 8th, 2024
This event was recorded November 1, 2024 in Taos, NM at SOMOS Salon & Bookshop by KCEI Radio, Red River/Taos and broadcast on November 8, 2024.
Taken by the Shawnee Reading

Taken by the Shawnee Reading

September 1st, 2024
This reading took place at The Church of the Holy Faith in Santa Fe, New Mexico in August of 2024.

Upcoming Events

Jul 25
July 25th - July 27th

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Taos MO
Sep 23
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How Daddy Lost His Ear – Garcia Street Books

Garcia Street Books
Santa Fe NM
Sep 30
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How Daddy Lost His Ear – The Church of the Holy Faith

The Church of the Holy Faith
Santa Fe NM
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salliebingham avatar Sallie Bingham @salliebingham ·
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Years ago a man I was in love with persuaded me to have a large fish pond dug near my studio. I think it was his attempt to be part of my necessarily solitary life there; like other such attempts it failed—and now I'm left with the fish pond! https://buff.ly/fGgnN39 #Koi #KoiPond

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salliebingham avatar Sallie Bingham @salliebingham ·
30 Jun 1939751124925390864

Our wisdom outlasts kingdoms and democracies and tyrannies. It is for all places all people and all times. Unfortunately our wisdom can be bought, suborned, which is what I see in all the pretty women around Mr. T. "Lady Wisdom": https://buff.ly/mKAYBnf #HagiaSophia #DonaldTrump

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Recent Press

Sallie Bingham's latest is a captivating account of ancestor's ordeal
Pasatiempo, The Santa Fe New Mexican

“I felt she was with me” during the process of writing the book, Bingham says. “I felt I wasn’t writing anything that would have seemed to her false or unreal.”

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