The article analyses representations of abortion through discourse and images present in documentaries. Pro-life and pro-choice parties use audiovisual as means to diffuse their political messages in abortion controversy taking place in public space. Pro-life visual rhetoric uses images of different stages of development in order to prove the individuality of embryo and fetus and their status of person bearer of rights. Pro-choice movement builds a discourse through narratives of people who experienced abortion, emphasizing the suffering and violence of criminalization and clandestinity. The focus is the woman as a moral subject. The exception regards anencephaly, when images are used to represent the figure of an unviable brainless baby. Based on suffering and violence experiences, fetuses and women are presented as victims by different sides of the dispute, a way to claim rights.
abortion; image; personhood; suffering