Remembering epiphanies: Adapting the Reproductive Story to Include an Abortion Experience

In this article, I explore the act of remembering the abortion experience within a larger reproductive narrative. A pregnancy is a private and intimate experience as it occurs within a woman's body, but reproduction is also infused with collective notions of women's bodies and roles in society and nation-building. These collective notions are enacted on the body and become internalised within the body. Hence, the act of remembering an abortion experience becomes an embodied memory of these sometimes-competing collective notions and internalised private desires. Using narratives from the project, Post-Abortion Narratives shared by Perth women, I argue that the theoretical concept of epiphanies can provide a vehicle for adapting tacit understandings of motherhood into clear articulations of the decision to terminate. I then explore the production of an artefact of the experience as described by two participants, Sarah and Leanne.