“I didn’t think about, ‘I’m having an abortion,’ I just did it. Blasted through fear; I want this life, not that life.”
In her new memoir, A Termination, Honor Moore confronts the complexities of reproductive rights in America from a feminist perspective. The book acts as a centerpiece of Moore’s journey as a writer, woman and advocate for bodily autonomy.
In A Termination, Moore recounts her decision to have an abortion in 1969: “I didn’t think about, ‘I’m having an abortion,’ I just did it. Blasted through fear; I want this life, not that life.” Her narrative weaves through the cultural and political landscape of the time, from Yale Drama School to the streets of New York City, exploring the intersection of personal choice and societal expectations.
Moore’s memoir acknowledges the complexity of these issues, reflecting on how her choice to have an abortion allowed her to pursue her life as a writer. This decision was the one that allowed her to “choose life as a writer.” Her story resonates with Audre Lorde’s famous quote: “There is no such thing as a single-issue struggle because we do not live single-issue lives.”
The following is an excerpt from A Termination, copyright © 2024 by Honor Moore, used by permission from A Public Space Books. This is originally written in sections. Asterisks mark section breaks.
‘Did you waver?’ asks a voice in my head. I want to say no, and that is correct. I did not waver.
Not my lover, not my parents, and they said I couldn’t tell a friend.
I remember my terror that the psychiatrist would not believe me. I’m sure I cried. I’m sure I told him I did not want to marry the father and was certain I could not care for a child. All of this complicated further because I’d unwillingly had sex with a man other than my lover, so I never knew who the father was and there was no way to find out.
My lover was one of my professors; I’ll call him L. In those days, there was no taint of the criminal in such a relationship, nor were they unusual. You could not have persuaded me then that what I felt was not love but a desire to be him, to seize his talent for myself. But I got pregnant, which I denied until the test came back. I think I must already have known what the results would be when I started to feel oddly happy and found myself standing in the middle of the room, sun pouring through the window, my hands across my belly.
The psychiatrist wrote a letter and an obstetrician performed my abortion in a hospital. The month was April, the year 1969.
***
I am 21, 22, 23, and I am taking birth control pills so I won’t get pregnant. I skip a day, even two.
***
Because I was the theatre, I make this a play. The lighting is such that you see the young woman come into view; the effect is that the closer she comes to the gynecologist at his desk, the more intense the light. He stands and gestures to the chair and she sits down. They don’t speak. As if in a dream, I say to the lighting designer.
There is a slow revolve and we see her sitting on the examination table, the doctor standing. She swivels her body and lies down, white sheet a sudden tent over her bent knees, her feet in the metal stirrups. He bends to look It comes to me now that right then, the gynecologist asks again if I want to do this, and I say yes. ‘Did you waver?’ asks a voice in my head. I want to say no, and that is correct. I did not waver.
Are you sure? he asks.
Yes.
Have you told anyone?
No.
I made the decision by myself. But also with the remote-control help of my mother: Don’t come home pregnant.
As I wake in the recovery room: No sexual relations or you’ll get an infection, the doctor intones.
* * *
The day after the abortion, in L’s apartment, we begin to make love. I tell L I have cramps but not about the abortion. He goes out to teach. Very bad cramps but also a little blood and a scraped feeling. Coat hanger: I damn near died, a friend told me about hers. I call the doctor. Did you have sexual relations? No. He’ll call the drugstore, he says, prescribe. He thought I was lying. I thought I was lying. L had suddenly wanted me, and my body wanted him back. I pushed his hand away. I have an infection, I say, not the whole truth, and then he is so sympathetic, so nice—picking up the prescription, cuddling me into bed—that I tell him.
I had an abortion.
He began to shout: I would have married you! the line I remember. He leapt up, as if the bed had burned him.
I remember the turn of his body after the shouting, how he put his jacket on and left the apartment.
* * *
Therapeutic abortion was effectively legal, but in practice it was a loophole, and the doctor was scared. A black-clad SWAT team creeps into the room of beds, wrenches his arms behind his back, jerks me from the recovery cot.
I made the decision by myself. But also with the remote-control help of my mother: ‘Don’t come home pregnant.‘
***
A son, I always thought, and some time ago, because of how I imagine his eyes, I decided L was the father. When I ran into him at that party in my 40s, our son would have been in his 20s. That was when L told me he had just been approached by a grown-up daughter from a long-ago one-night stand—she was a psychologist, he told me, somewhere in the Midwest.
My son and I go to our favorite restaurant and sit in a corner booth. I had never lied to him, but I sort of do now: We loved each other very much and then we broke up and didn’t see each other again for a very long time.
And then I tell him about myself as a young woman, about loving L and about my naive encounter with a photographer, including that I thought seeing myself nude in photographs might reassure me about my body. What is a son supposed to do with that? I want him to understand I did not know how to take care of myself.
He was sort of a friend and I wasn’t attracted to him, I say; but before he took the photos, we drank scotch and I had my clothes off for the camera and we had sex that I didn’t want.
I might be in tears by now, my son would hold my hands and tell me he loves me, bringing to mind the gentleness I have seen in my sisters’ sons. I would tell him more about L, his talent, and about how I once met two of his uncles, British music hall comics with Cockney accents, at the New Yorker Hotel.
Are you sure he’s my father?
Yes, because of your eyes, I say.
But do you really know?
Do you want to do a DNA test?
And just like that, another scene to imagine: meeting L and asking if he will agree to a cheek swab.
In my imagination, it’s almost seven o’clock when I arrive—I am always on time, but L, I remember, is often late. I take a seat and order sparkling water. I wait there with my Pellegrino. I am still living in the imagined apartment I bought on 10th Street, a big apartment for my son and me, which I could have afforded then.
Old man L. He’s wearing khaki and has quite a belly. The saddest thing is the loss of the curl in his hair. He sits down opposite me and says, How are you, my love, brushing fingers down my cheek. Which makes me a bit sick to my stomach.
My son wants to know his father, I say. Have I ever told L about the photographer? I tell him now, without going into specifics: You remember how it was then. … Did L then tell me he too had been unfaithful? Well, I did sleep with Carol a few more times, I have him admit.
We’d like you to take a DNA test, just to be sure you’re the father.
If that’s what you want, he says, and then the waiter comes and we order paella.
***
Your abortion was a choice you made, my friend Robert says.
Not really, I reply, and explain that the word ‘choice’ replaced ‘pro-abortion’ nearly a decade after I made my decision.
But you did make a choice… Robert, born in the 1980s, is insistent on this point.
Okay, I say, but I think of making a choice as something thought out and considered, which my abortion was not.
You knew what you wanted to do with your life.
No, I did not know what I wanted to do.
You wanted to be a writer.
Possibly. But the idea was so remote, I couldn’t verbalize it, even to myself.
Remote—a distant filmy image. Even when I moved to New York in 1969 and told everyone I was going to write “a novel,” the intention seemed to hover outside my body. I had never heard of Virginia Woolf, let alone A Room of One’s Own (1929). Dropped from memory was the college class in which the instructor, a novelist, a young man, declared my story the best of the semester, and Sunday mornings with the graduate student, not a boyfriend, to whom I read my first poems.
You were in the forefront.
The forefront of what?
Of feminism, he says. You were one of the first.
Not one of the very first, and there was barely any feminism when I had my abortion. No abortion rights movement.
But the Miss America protest…
***
There was barely any feminism when I had my abortion. No abortion rights movement.
The year is 2022, and I imagine this: A woman and her friend drive to an abortion clinic across the border in Mexico. A police car screeching. Gangs of men track you down. Flash of the recovery room in New Haven. Next thing you know, they’ll round up women like me who had abortions in 1969, no statute of limitations; they drag me in, based on what I disclose here, not only my own abortion but the one I drove my friend to in New Jersey, the ones two friends from college had. Is Diana exempt because she later raised a child?
***
A woman who publishes a book about her long-ago abortion is imprisoned when she gives a public reading at a bookstore in Texas where she once read her poems. You think they’re lining up for you, but they crowd in, pour accelerant on your stack of books and light a match.
***
I am standing here, on an outcropping of granite. Abruptly the sun is overshadowed and there is a harsh chill in the air, seconds ago so pleasant. Let’s say I am outside time but within a dimension of time that includes all I have lived. I am considering what has been forbidden and also the idea of consequences. I am often here with my sisters, but today I am alone.
What is it that remains unsaid?
At a table in late autumn, I make my way through what I have written here. Interesting how I can’t remember the beginning when I reach the end. It’s always that way, how you’re tossed forward to start again.
I did not tell, begins this book.
I’m telling you, ends my long-ago poem.
The Supreme Court’s overturning Roe v. Wade represented the largest blow to women’s constitutional rights in history. A series from Ms., Our Abortion Stories chronicles readers’ experiences of abortion pre- and post-Roe. Telling stories of then and now shows how critical abortion has been and continues to be for women and girls. Share your abortion story by emailing myabortionstory@msmagazine.com.
Editor’s note: For help, please look to these trusted groups:
- Safe websites to buy abortion medication: Aid Access, Plan C Pills, Abortion Finder, I Need An A
- If you need help affording abortion care, contact an abortion fund near you.
- To protect your digital privacy when planning your abortion, click here.
- For free legal help as a patient or doctor, call If/When/How’s Repro Helpline: 844-868-2812
- For medical advice, contact the Miscarriage & Abortion Hotline: 833-246-2632
- If you need to know the abortion law in your state, look to the Center for Reproductive Rights.
(Thanks to Jessica Valenti of Abortion, Every Day for this list.)
At Ms. magazine, our mission is to deliver facts about the feminist movement (and those who stand in its way) and foster informed discussions—not to tell you who to vote for or what to think. We believe in empowering our readers to form their own opinions based on reliable reporting. To continue providing you with independent feminist journalism, we rely on the generous support of our readers. Please consider making a tax-deductible donation today if you value the work we do and want to see it continue. Thank you for supporting women’s voices and rights.
