Almost 100 years separate Dorothy Day’s experience of abortion from my own. But last year, as I searched for light in the dark woods of my grief, I looked to the words of the Catholic Worker cofounder, whose movement I joined in 2009. “Writing is prayer,” Day would say. She also said, “We write what we suffer.” I hoped she could help guide me back out to the sun.
I read the 2017 biography by her granddaughter Kate Hennessy. In it, I met young Dorothy, who was madly in love with Lionel Moise, a journalist and a philanderer who wouldn’t be tied down by any woman, especially not a pregnant one. When Dorothy discovered her pregnancy in the summer of 1919, she kept the news from Lionel, only telling him after he decided to leave New York City and move to Chicago. He suggested she keep the baby and find a wealthy man to marry.
But Dorothy didn’t want to marry anyone else, and she didn’t believe she could raise the child on her own. Later in life, Dorothy confided in her doctor: “When I was young and leading a ‘free life,’ it never occurred to me to have the baby.” So even though abortion was illegal, Dorothy was determined to terminate the pregnancy.
