This thesis examines representations and registers of abortion speech in Australia from 1969-2008. While ‘choice’ was exclusive to early pro-abortion campaigns it has, over time, achieved hegemonic status in both pro-choice and anti-abortion utterances. This thesis argues that the centrality of choice to all abortion discourse has not liberated women from compulsory motherhood. Rather, by virtue of the emotions that attach to choice, it has recuperated aborting women to the very maternal identity that deems abortion to be an illegitimate choice for pregnant women. Choice and emotion work together to (re)produce aborting women as deviant subjects.