Honor Moore’s Memoir Reckons with Abortion, Agency, and Women’s Fight for Autonomy

Honor Moore’s new memoir, A Termination, is a raw, unflinching exploration of a pivotal moment in her life: a doctor-assisted abortion she had in 1969, long before Roe v. Wade guaranteed constitutional abortion rights. Now 80, Moore reflects on how that choice untied a knot that had held her back from becoming herself.

“I’ve never been anything but happy with it,” Moore said in a recent interview. “There was a knot, you see, that was holding me back from becoming who I was. I untied it with that abortion.” Writing this memoir 55 years after the procedure and just before the Supreme Court’s 2022 Dobbs decision overturned abortion protections, Moore’s story resonates urgently in today’s fractured landscape of reproductive rights.

Moore situates her personal story within a broader feminist awakening. As a young woman navigating a literary world hostile to female writers, she found her voice in consciousness-raising groups alongside icons like Adrienne Rich and Audre Lorde. Together, they forged a feminist literary tradition that challenged the politics of women’s personal lives and laid groundwork for intersectional feminism, even before the term existed.

Her memoir goes beyond recounting a single event. Moore describes her abortion as “the first decision I made on my own behalf,” a profound act of self-birth that shaped her identity as a writer and woman. She rejects simplistic notions of “choice,” instead framing it as a deep, transformative decision.

In one striking chapter, Moore imagines a son she never had, making clear this is not regret but a creative act of imagining alternate possibilities. “I have him on the page,” she said. “That’s what I enabled myself to do—have a whole life of the imagination where I imagine things a different way on the page. But it’s not longing.”

Moore’s story is a reminder that abortion is not just a political issue but a deeply personal act of agency. As abortion rights crumble in the US and abuses against women continue globally, from the Epstein files to ongoing assaults on bodily autonomy, Moore’s memoir insists that women’s consciousness and resistance endure.

Today, Moore describes herself as “a woman giving birth to herself.” Through her teaching and writing, she hopes to inspire other women to find their own voices and claim their own lives. The positive reception of A Termination suggests her message is reaching those who need it most: women who have faced similar struggles and those fighting to keep reproductive freedom alive.