A dissertation submitted to the Faculty of Humanities, University of the Witwatersrand, Johannesburg, in fulfilment of the requirements of the degree of Master of Arts. Johannesburg, 2016 / This dissertation argues that the representation of abortion provides a platform which reveals women’s societal and gendered positions, and provides a critique of the hypocritical attitudes to which societies subject women. I will be considering various representations of abortion in six films and two television shows. The films are Alexander Kluge’s Part-Time Work of a Domestic Slave (1973), Cristian Mungiu’s 4 Months, 3 Weeks and 2 Days (2007), Mike Leigh’s Vera Drake (2004), Fruit Chan’s Dumplings (2004), The Pang Brother’s Re-Cycle (2006) and Ridley Scott’s Prometheus (2012). The two television shows are FX’s American Horror Story (2011—) and ABC’s Grey’s Anatomy (2005—). Each text provides a unique representation of abortion, often situating the issue within particular physical, social, political and cultural locations. In presenting a close reading of each text, I will show how the representation of abortion in each chapter relates to differing social, political and cultural ideologies. I will argue that there is a developing sense of the lived realities of women, which include, but are not limited to, issues of alienation, autonomy, agency and identity. Such lived realties, I will contend, are constructed within societies that, aware or not of the fact, are dominated by patriarchal influences. / MT2017