Good Girls Avoid Abortion / Live-Action TV

• 21 Jump Street: Deconstructed in the episode "Whose choice is it anyway?" The main guest star is shown as a 'good girl', and she sees a counselor to explore her options, including abortion and seriously looking into adoption. The character ends up miscarrying after her boyfriend bombs the counseling/abortion clinic, not knowing she's in there. She outright states "It was my choice to make. [He] had no right to take that away from me!" It also reveals that regular cast member Judy Hoffs had an abortion at 17; when asked if she regretted it, Judy answers poignantly that she regrets getting pregnant, and she really regrets not sharing it with her mother, but she believes that she made the right choice. The episode itself shows either a serious exploration or an example of all the three main choices; keeping and raising the baby, adoption, and abortion, and all are shown as valid choices. It also emphasizes the need for counselling services, because every girl (this is Jump street after all) in this situation needs and deserves support in order to make the right choices for them.
• Accused (2023): Clara has to leave Texas for her abortion because in Texas it's banned. Jack drives her to New Mexico for abortion pills at a clinic there. Britney, his fiancée, reveals her mother was pregnant as a teenager with her and almost had an abortion before being talked out of this by a stranger. She's against abortion and not at all happy with him aiding Clara as a result. The narrative though is very sympathetic to Clara, particularly since she's pregnant due to rape and was so distraught she'd nearly killed herself over the fact.
• All My Children:
  • When Erica conceived after being raped, she hid her pregnancy from her mother. By the time her mother found out, it was too late for an abortion, though this was not due to moral grounds nor Erica's desire to have the baby — she was unable to talk about what happened. Because a teenaged Erica was too young to raise her baby daughter at the time and wanted her baby to have a happy life and to protect her from the painful truth, Erica and her mother place Erica's baby girl for adoption with a good couple.
  • When Erica's youngest daughter Bianca, conceived after her own rape. Despite the circumstances, she couldn't bring herself to abort and carried the baby to term, deciding to raise her daughter herself.
  • Despite Dixie Martin's husband and his family (several of whom are medical professionals) practically trying to browbeat her into having an abortion due to the serious health risks that a pregnancy will bring her, she refuses — and eventually miscarries due to these very same health issues.
• Played with in American Horror Story, where at first college student Hayden's decision to abort the child she's carrying as the result of her affair with Ben is presented as a mature and rational choice, but she changes her mind right before she goes through with it in order to pull The Baby Trap on Ben, who's already married with one teenage daughter and another on the way, and plans to uproot her life to move to California and is clearly presented as being in the wrong for forcing this on him. Becomes a moot point when Larry murders her shortly thereafter. Likewise the girls who come to the Montgomerys for back alley abortions in the 1920s are not presented in a villainous light and instead as victims of the insane Dr. Montgomery, especially since they had no legal methods available to them at the time.
  • Also used for Kick the Dog purposes when Constance Langdon mentions to Vivien (who recently found out that she's pregnant again) that if they'd had "those tests" (i.e. DNA tests) back when she was pregnant with her daughter Adelaide, who has Down's Syndrome, that she probably would have aborted her. Needless to say, Constance isn't the best parent.
  • Used on an Asshole Victim in the second season, when Lana is raped by Dr. Thredson and tells him that she aborted the child. She tries and fails once, and has an opportunity for a safe backroom abortion later on in the series, but she declines, not out of any moral standing, but rather that she was tired of death. Ironically, the child then grows up to be a serial killer who is directly inspired by his knowledge that his mother tried to abort him and his father was a sadistic serial killer whose victims were exclusively women. The whole season ends with Lana shooting him once they meet again forty years later, becoming not only a quite literal case of Shoot the Shaggy Dog but subtly supporting the notion that Lana should have gone through with the abortion if she'd wanted to prevent more deaths in the long run.
• The Americans: Averted with Nina, who's mentioned to have had an abortion in the past but is not portrayed badly for it. In fact, she's probably one of the nicest characters. The father, her estranged husband, seems to not hold it against her or be upset, merely speculative as to how things would have been different if she had kept it.
• Played with on Angel. Darla says that she tried to have an abortion when she discovered she was pregnant. It didn't work. Turns out the baby was mystically protected while in her womb. However, Darla is about as far as one can get from being a "good girl".^note She's a vampire in a setting where vampires are Always Chaotic Evil with very limited exceptions, and as a human, Darla was a prostitute who likely was aware of others who chose to abort rather than bring a child into that world and/or lose their livelihood.
• Arrested Development:
  • Apparently, Lindsay Bluth was pregnant "loads of times"... just never with Maebe. Except she was.
  • GOB cautions George Michael that if a religious girl gets pregnant, "she stays pregnant."
    Narrator: When GOB was in high school, he had sex with these women. These women got pregnant. This one had a baby.
• In As the World Turns, Liberty doesn't know whether to have an abortion, raise the baby herself, or give it to her mother or another couple to raise. She has a convenient miscarriage. Janet herself refused to get an abortion, raising Liberty by herself as a teenager.
• Awake (2012) plays this perfectly straight... except with adoption. By the time the pregnancy in question is known to the protagonists, it's five months along, too late for an abortion.
• Babylon Berlin: Helga decides to have an abortion upon getting pregnant and having a poor reception from the father, Gereon, who doubts his paternity, denying her his support. This only happens after much contemplation and reluctance on her part. Further, the abortionist she goes to is portrayed sympathetically, as a supportive and motherly woman. It's also somewhat implied that Charlotte has had abortions in the past, since she also knows the abortionist's address beforehand (or knows women that have). In either case this wouldn't be surprising, given her past as a sex worker. Overall, this is portrayed neutrally.
• Being Human plays this straight in the third season. Nina gets pregnant after she and George have sex (the pill wasn't designed with werewolves in mind, apparently) and decides to abort despite George's objections. She changes her mind after meeting Sasha, a young female zombie whose body is rapidly succumbing to decay. Sasha tells them that her greatest regret was that she didn't do more with her life, like starting a family, because she assumed she'd always have time.
  • Incidentally, Nina's reasons for wanting to abort are similar to Kyoko Honda's — fear of repeating what she herself went through with an abusive mother, who constantly reminded Nina that she was the result of an unplanned pregnancy.
• On Beverly Hills, 90210, Andrea gets pregnant and despite consciously deciding to have an abortion, citing the fact that she's only 18, has only just started dating the baby's father, and is only a freshman in college, she changes her mind at the last minute and has the baby (the Reality Subtext is that Andrea's portrayer was pregnant in Real Life and TPTB decided to write it in). When Kelly got pregnant several years later, she decided on an abortion, with the support of her boyfriend Brandon, but sure enough, miscarried.
• In series three of Big Love, Sarah discovers she's pregnant from her ex-boyfriend. She initially decides to put the baby up for adoption, then decides to keep it and raise it with her best friend Heather while she's at college in Arizona. However, she suffers a Convenient Miscarriage soon after.
• Black Mirror: In "ArkAngel" this is averted against Sara's will. While she had no idea she was even pregnant then, the crushed pills Marie placed into the smoothies were meant to terminate Sara's pregnancy as the doctor revealed when Sara was vomiting at school later.
• Black Sails: Anne helps Max induce an abortion after she's impregnated due to being repeatedly raped. It's portrayed sympathetically, even as a touching gesture from Anne, who up to this point hadn't shown a soft side.
• The Bold and the Beautiful:
  • When Amber got pregnant (either from a one-night stand with boyfriend Rick or one with best friend Raymond), the myriad of unfortunate circumstances—they were all teenagers, neither relationship was very serious—made her decide to have an abortion, only for Rick to actually burst into the exam room and beg her to reconsider. They married, only for the child to be stillborn.
  • When Brooke got pregnant with her son-in-law's baby, despite her best friend warning her that an abortion was not only a good idea, but probably the best one, given the havoc that would undoubtedly be wreaked by the child's birth, Brooke decided against one, then spent the next nine months whining about how her daughter would hate her once she found out, precisely what her friend had warned her about. Even worse, this was not the first, nor the last time that Brooke would be in this kind of situation, the last one also being complicated by her advanced age, yet each time, she chose to have the baby.
• Boston Legal: Missy Tiggs once tricked a man so he'd make her pregnant with his child and he hired Alan Shore to have the courts force her to abort. Alan accepted the case and believed he had a chance because ever since Roe vs Wade, the government has been waiting for a chance to have Roe vs. Wade overturned without being seen as anti-abortion for this (or so he believed — the series never hinted if he was right or wrong in that point). Alan's Freudian Excuse for this is that, back in college, he once got a woman pregnant and she, assuming he'd not want the child, had an abortion and only told him afterward. Alan took the case hoping to make it so the child's father would have as much right as the mother over the abortion issue.
• In one episode of Call the Midwife, a teenage prostitute named Mary gets knocked up and realizes that if she stays with the pimp she's been working for, she'll be forced to have an abortion. Wanting to keep the baby, she appeals to Jenny Lee for help. Jenny takes her to a priest, who shelters Mary throughout the pregnancy. In this case though, it ends badly. The priest ends up putting the baby up for adoption without Mary's consent, arguing that a teenage mother would have no chance at all of getting a job, and thus splitting the two up was the only possible way for either to survive (the baby was adopted by a family able to support her). The episode also hinted that Mary wasn't entirely right in the head (she seemed unable to understand why it was worrying and not romantic at all that her boyfriend, who tricked her into the prostitution ring, was stalking her around the place she was hiding at) and that, coupled with a later episode where she kidnapped a baby (under the delusion that it was her own) and had no idea how to properly care for it lead to the hints that she would have been unable to care for her own child, had she been allowed to keep it.
• Catastrophe: Several characters, including Sharon, bring up the option of abortion. Yet she decides not to for no clear reason, despite her being 41 and only knowing the father briefly (the conception happened during a week of casual sex).
• Deconstructed in Charite. At the end of the 19th century in Berlin, abortions are doable but illegal, and when nurse Stine brings her teenaged cousin Marie, who has been knocked up by a tenant, to the hospital, she can't find anyone willing to perform the procedure because no one wants to lose their license. Marie, who has been explicitly warned by Stine not to go to some back-alley quack, is too frightened to go home to her penniless family with yet another mouth to feed and attempts to kill herself.
• Chicago P.D.. The team rescues a young woman who has been kidnapped and held prisoner for several months. She's horrified to learn that she's pregnant, outright declaring, "I can't have his baby!", but by the episode's conclusion, has decided to keep it, now saying, "I want something good to come out of this."
• Cold Case deals with abortion several times:
  • The season 3 episode "Family" involved a high school couple who decide not to get an abortion after seeing photos given to them by a militantly pro-life (and hypocritical) school nurse. It ruins both their lives (anvilicious, but on the other side).
  • The trope is played straight in "The Good-Bye Room", although Hilary indicates that her desire not to abort is less about concerns over her virtue and more about a (justified) fear of injury or death from the procedure, as this is another episode that takes place when abortion was not yet legal.
• Continuum: Kiera scheduled one, but decided against it, and urges her grandmother to do the same (of course, that was to save her own future existence).
• Control Z: Pablo asks María not to have an abortion, saying he would care for her and it's also his baby. She insists on her right to though, and ultimately does so, which isn't treated as bad by the narrative.
  Pablo: Hey, did you get my message?
  Maria: I did.
  Pablo: So?
  Maria: It's not your decision.
  Pablo: It's my child too, Maria.
  Maria: That changed after you bailed on me.
• Criminal Minds: Season two's "Aftermath" has a serial rapist that is attacking girls at a religious school, then switches to an older demographic when one of the religious girls "chooses the sin of suicide over the sin of abortion."
• One episode of CSI resolved a case with this as its motive. When the team investigates the deaths of a pregnant barista, her coworker, a casino magnate, his bodyguard, and a college student, they trace the spent casings to a gun owned by a local businessman. When confronted with the evidence, he confessed that he had an affair with the barista, and when she got pregnant, he reassured her that he would pay for her abortion so long as nobody found out about the affair. On the night of the murders, she told him she decided she was keeping the baby and was going to sue him for child support. In a fit of rage, he shot her, and when the coworker went to investigate, he killed her as well. Just then, the casino magnate came in, and as the bodyguard reached for his gun, the perp shot them both, and the college student, whose music drowned out the gunshots, was also killed.
• Both played straight and averted in Deadwood. It's made clear that Doc Cochran is the Gem's abortionist-in-residence, and Trixie mentions that she's had several abortions. But when widowed Alma Garrett becomes pregnant by a married man, she decides to keep the pregnancy. Ellsworth generously offers to marry her, and it's only after this marriage that the pregnancy fails and she has to have an abortion to save her life.
• Dear White People: Played with. Coco is deeply conflicted about the decision, but ultimately decides to have one. But when she goes to the abortion clinic with Kelsey, she decides against it, leaves Winchester, ultimately becomes a lawyer, and raises her daughter (with Troy’s apparent help), who herself gets into Winchester. But it’s then revealed to be a Daydream Surprise, and Coco instead goes through with the abortion. She obliquely refers to the abortion throughout the rest of Season 2, but it’s not shown how much it truly affected her.
• Derry Girls plays it straight at first, as the main character James is the result of a pregnancy that his mother initially planned to abort - and in fact travelled all the way over to England for. Her family only find out she didn't get it when she arrives back home with James sixteen years later. Of course the 'good girl' part is subverted when it's quickly obvious his mother Cathy is a ferociously neglectful flake who only comes back to get James because she wants cheap labor for her new business.
• Degrassi High averted this when Erica decided to have an abortion and went through with it. This lead to the repeats of Degrassi either cutting episodes 101, 102, and 103 ('A New Start' Parts 1 and 2, and 'Breaking Up is Hard to Do') or changing episode 101 so that Erica was never pregnant.
  • Degrassi: The Next Generation averted this with Manny (leading to a similar incident of the above: the episode in question didn't air in the states for years, and any references to Manny being moody afterwards was treated like she was just depressed over her messy break-up with Craig), but played it straight with Liberty—when JT suggests the possibility of abortion, she says she doesn't want to want to even think about it. However, she is three months along by the time she works up the courage to tell JT, so she's had enough time to think her options through.
  • Justified with Jenna; by the time she finds out she's pregnant, she's already five months along and the doctor informs her that a late-term abortion is potentially risky to her health.
  • Played very straight with Clare: when she finds out she's pregnant she immediately books an abortion. But after a scare with vaginal bleeding, she's relieved when the fetus is okay and the doctor informs her that it was quite a miracle that she was able to conceive at all so soon after beating cancer. This causes the very ambitious Clare to choose to keep the child, despite wanting to go to university and get back together with her ex-boyfriend, who is not the father (or so she thinks).
  • And when Spike was pregnant with Emma on Degrassi Junior High, she did briefly consider abortion, even at the protest of her boyfriend, but (obviously, or else there'd be no Next Generation) decided to have the baby.
  • In Next Class, Lola gets pregnant after taking her birth control wrong. She decides to have an abortion and the show actually follows her into the room for the procedure, and afterwards she says she knows she made the right decision.
• Abortion was alluded to three times on Desperate Housewives and avoided every time:
  • Gabrielle becomes pregnant in season 1 (due to her birth control pills being tampered with) and remains that way until a Convenient Miscarriage midway through season 2. She dismisses the question by saying that she and her husband are good Catholics.
  • Danielle becomes pregnant in season 3. When she tells Austin (the father) about it, he tells her that he "knows of this clinic," but she immediately dismisses it with "Absolutely not!" She goes through with the pregnancy and gives birth to a son, Benjamin, in early season 4.
  • Lynette becomes pregnant with twins at the end of season 5. Early in season 6, she becomes depressed when she sees them on the ultrasound, telling Tom that she doesn't love them like she loved her other kids and doesn't want them. She has a change of heart after having a talk with Susan about it.
• The third season of Dexter has Rita discover that she's pregnant and — despite coming to the conclusion that having the child would be a stressful, near-unmanageable complication to an already complex situation — she decides to have the child.
• Subverted on Different Strokes. Kimberly's pregnant friend makes it clear that this is one of the options she's considering—"I don't know whether to have it or have an abortion". However, true to form, she's never seen or mentioned again after the episode, so even with her father assuring her that "we're going to work this out", viewers never learn what she decided to do.
• In A Different World, when Kim fears she's pregnant, she outright weeps, "I don't want to have an abortion!", even though she's clearly upset about being pregnant. Understandable — she's a college freshman and only just started dated the baby's father. She turns out not to be pregnant after all.
• In Downton Abbey, Edith considers having an abortion when she gets pregnant out of wedlock and the father of her child is her boyfriend, who is technically married to another woman and currently missing. The fact that it was even brought up is very progressive considering the time period, and her normally harsh aunt even supports her. However, the clinic is presented as a very dark, seedy place (probably Truth in Television for the time), and Edith decides against abortion, eventually choosing adoption.
• In the UK mini-series The Duchess of Duke Street, Louisa Trotter becomes pregnant by her lover, Charlie Tyrrell, in 1903. When she and Charlie discuss what to do, they both dismiss abortion out of hand because of the very real danger of infection. The decision not to abort was justifiable given the time frame, but the decision to have the character become pregnant was less defensible given that she was very loosely based on a historical individual who never had a child and probably never slept with a man.
• Laura from Emily of New Moon is horrified at the very idea of abortion, yet has little qualms about whoring herself out to the cruel factory overseer.
• ER: Played straight by the women of the show despite the multitude of unwanted/unplanned/unexpected pregnancies. It's only briefly alluded to when Chen implies that she deliberately hemmed and hawed about what to do until it was too late for her to terminate (she gave the baby up for adoption), and when the cancer-stricken Mark asks his fiancee Elizabeth if she'll still have the baby if his diagnosis is poor (in both character's cases, the actresses were pregnant in Real Life and the writers decided to include it). The only aversion is when Abby admits to having had an abortion during her marriage, fearful of either raising a mentally ill child, or putting an innocent child through the same hell she went through growing up with a bipolar mother. Later, when she gets pregnant by Luka, despite still having the same fears, she decides not to go ahead with an abortion.
  • Played every which way in an episode appropriately titled Shades of Gray where the doctors treat the victim of a woman's clinic bombing. When Dr. Weaver orders Dr. DelAmico to complete the abortion that one woman was in the process of having, the Catholic DelAmico freezes, then leaves. In that same episode, Weaver lectures another young woman from the clinic, who was there for her fifth procedure, telling her that her behavior is irresponsible, citing that she could simply use birth control and avoid all this. Proving that she isn't a "good girl", the woman basically tells her to fuck off. The most sympathetic vignette is a 40-something year old woman who admits that despite being Happily Married and dearly loving her four daughters, she simply does not want any more children, nor does she want to start the child-rearing process all over again, having just sent the last of her kids off to college. There's a pro-life protester injured in the bombing as well, who naturally believes this trope to be true, although she's told off for it.
  • One episode featured a female patient suffering from malnutrition and gets mildly reprimanded by the doctors for not watching her health while pregnant. The woman admits that she knew about the pregnancy and purposefully starved herself in hopes of managing to induce a miscarriage, saying that she and her husband already have several kids and are financially on tight strings as it is. Another baby would make things worse. She also says that abortion wasn't an option she could bring up because she knew her husband would be against it. The doctors discuss things with her and she eventually gets sent up to OB/GYN to perform an abortion. Nothing is said about her choices being wrong, except that starving herself was unlikely to work. The closest to being 'wrong' is the husband, being shown to be vehemently against abortion for any reason.
  • Averted with Nicole, who briefly dated Luka. She tells him she's pregnant to keep him from kicking her out when he discovers she's a thief, but has an abortion after Abby chastises her for trying to pull The Baby Trap.
• Everything Now: Subverted. Becca finds she's pregnant and gets abortion pills, but also wants to tell her mom, worrying she'll disapprove. Her mom is fully supportive of any decision she makes though, and Becca goes through with the abortion. Mia is also supportive after finding this out and wishes Becca had told her at the time so she could have been there with her.
• Ezel:
  • Discussed by Bade and Azad after the latter reveals she is pregnant. Bade is aghast and upset to learn her friend is contemplating abortion, saying it would be terrible to kill a living soul who has no one but its mother. Azad in turn asks whether it would be right to keep the child, only to give it a life of loneliness and instability — an experience that describes her own youth.
  • While she eventually chooses to keep her baby, Azad ultimately subverts the trope. She has no moral qualms regarding abortion; instead, her inner conflict comes from the tension between what she wants (having a baby) and reality (whether she is able to give her child the life he or she deserves). It is only when she has promise of support and stability that she finally shelves the abortion option.
• On The Facts of Life, Blair's mother visits her and tells her that she's pregnant, but not going to go through with it. Blair is very disappointed with her mother's decision and how little thought she put into it (this was very true-to-life for Lisa Whelchel, as she is a devout born-again Christian). Blair eventually talks her mother into going through with the pregnancy, and the baby (a girl) is born later in the season in a Christmas Episode.
• Flesh and Bone: Averted. Claire did not abort her child of incest, but reveals she used to punch herself in the stomach in the hopes of a miscarriage. This suggests she would have had an abortion, had her father permitted it.
• The Frankenstein Chronicles: Flora's desire for (and later procuring) an abortion is disapproved of by everyone else (even herself, eventually) except Hervey. It turns out he not only performed the abortion, but is the real culprit in the murders.
• At the beginning of Roz's unplanned pregnancy arc in Season 5 of Frasier, the possibility of abortion is brought up only very briefly and indirectly by Frasier. Roz makes it clear that she never contemplated abortion as an option.
• A French Village: Lucienne's priest warns against having an abortion, saying that is unforgivable, but this is treated neutrally by Marie, Judith and Henri (the first two initially help her). When she tries to induce one herself though it fails and she's injured doing so. Daniel refuses to perform one, so she continues her pregnancy. Rita also decides to have an abortion immediately, then changes her mind at Jean's suggestion.
• Averted on Friday Night Lights, where a minor female character falls pregnant from a one-night stand, and spends an episode considering all her options before ultimately going through with it. The episode does a pretty amazing job of never making the story a political issue, and keeping it focused on the characters that are affected.
• Just barely alluded to on Friends, with Rachel's pregnancy. When the rest of the gang asks how and what she plans to tell Ross, she responds, "I'm going to tell him that I plan to have the baby", etc.
• Fringe has Fauxlivia having some sort of illness that eventually almost certainly kills both the mother and the child (her sister had the same syndrome and died from it). So, for her, abortion is the only way out, and she's definitely doing it (even if the term itself, as usual, is never named). However, before she can go through with it, she's kidnapped and her pregnancy is accelerated. Ultimately, both she and her baby survive-the kidnapping was orchestrated by the baby's scientist grandfather who needed the child's DNA for his own nefarious purposes.
• In Frontline, hard-nosed bitch reporter Brooke finds out she's pregnant, and wants to keep the baby. However, she's not married and the producers blackmail her with mentions that she's being considered for the star of a new show — but that would be impossible if she was pregnant on-air. They mention that she could discreetly deal with the problem and call the absence a family emergency. At the end of the episode, she's absent for a day due to "a grandmother's funeral."
• General Hospital. After cheating on husband AJ, Carly is horrified to find herself pregnant with her lover's child (she knows she can't pass it off as her husband's, thanks to their Sexless Marriage) and while she makes arrangements for an abortion, she ultimately can't go through with it. Sure enough, she miscarries after falling down some stairs.
  • Laura Webber feared she might be pregnant following her rape by Luke, but tearfully declared that she wouldn't have an abortion if that were the case. Whether for personal/moral reasons or because there was a chance the baby could be her husband's rather than her rapist's is never clear. It became a moot debate when she wasn't pregnant after all.
• In a Gilmore Girls flashback episode, when Lorelai was pregnant with Rory, Chris's father (who had been established as a jerk in a previous episode) tacitly suggests to the other parents that Lorelai simply "get rid" of the baby. This leads to a rather stunned silence, which makes some sense, since both sets of parents are upper-class conservatives and the flashback is set in the eighties.
  • From the audience's perspective, his behavior is shocking, not because he suggests an abortion, but because he is solely interested in maintaining his family's image and never shows a moment's interest in what Lorelai wants.
• Quinn of Glee is briefly asked whether she's going to get an abortion, but she promptly says no without a single thought. This fits into her character, who has been set up as a very devoted Christian, canoodling aside. Later on, Rachel has a pregnancy scare and the issue might have been addressed, but they sidestep it when it turns out she wasn't pregnant.
• Averted on Good Girls Revolt with Angie. She tries to end the pregnancy by drinking tansy tea at first because she doesn't have the money for an abortion. Then all the girls at the office give money so she can have a proper procedure, and she isn’t portrayed negatively at all. At the same time, we find out that Cindy's had abortions in the past. However, this is The '60s / The '70s, so everything is done very secretively.
• The Good Wife: Discussed and averted. Diana is a supporter of abortion rights, while her client R. D. opposes it, and they have an informal debate about it, but later respectfully agree to disagree. On the other hand Nisa, Zack's girlfriend, is the only character mentioned to have had an abortion. This is treated neutrally, with no comment either way. Alicia is only upset that she didn't know Zack was having sex, and if the reveal could be bad for Peter's political career given the controversial issue.
• Played straight in Graceland. Having become pregnant by Briggs and realizing that Briggs is a sociopath, Charlie considers having an abortion, but can't bring herself to actually do it (though she pretends that she did because she knows that it would hurt him.) She later loses the child anyway after someone tries to poison her while she's undercover.
• Grey's Anatomy has Cristina get pregnant and have a miscarriage before her scheduled abortion. The second time she gets pregnant,^note Which should have been nearly impossible given the circumstances. she actually has the abortion. It causes a lot of trouble between her and her husband, though her decision is perfectly in-character. This time it's contrasted by Meredith and Derek unsuccessfully trying to conceive after Meredith's previous miscarriage, which happened the day she found out about the pregnancy, so she didn't have time to make a decision.
  • When April has a pregnancy scare, she decides that she would keep the baby. Justified as she's very religious and had been a virgin until a few months before.
• In season four of Grimm, Adalind learns she is once again pregnant with a baby she doesn't want. The father is someone she despises and she still hasn't found her last child (still a baby), but her first thought is to quickly sleep with another guy in order to pretend it's his. The only reason she kept her first baby was in order to sell it to the highest bidder, but ultimately changed her mind once maternal instinct kicks in. And as her character arc was moving her from villain to sympathetic antagonist and, eventually, to a genuinely good character (she becomes Nick's One True Pairing after Juliette turns into a Hexenbiest).
• Averted in the second season of Halt and Catch Fire. Donna gets pregnant and between her husband's increasingly erratic behavior, Mutiny's persistent money problems, and the fact that she's already got two daughters to take care of, decides that it's not a good time for her to have another child, and thus she has Cameron drive her to the abortion clinic.
• Hand of God: Alicia backs out of having an abortion at the very last minute, though she was mostly getting pressured into one by Paul to begin with so his reputation would be spared.
• The Handmaid's Tale:
  • The fundamentalist regime certainly thinks so, blaming abortion (among other things) for the current demographic crisis. A former abortion doctor is also seen hanged from the Wall later by Offred and Ofglen.
  • In the Season 4 episode “Milk”, flashbacks to Janine’s life before Gilead subvert this trope. A while before the establishment of Gilead, she fell pregnant with a second child and planned to have an abortion, as she was already a Struggling Single Mother, and the father was her on-again-off-again boyfriend who was implied to not be ready. However, when she went to a crisis pregnancy center, the person who met with her was a Holier Than Thou woman who twisted the perspective to make abortion sound worse than it was. She told Janine about the process for vacuum aspiration, leaving out that Janine is too early for that, and adds that she can become infertile if the process fails. Janine goes to a different place for an abortion, and this time, the doctor is completely honest with her and prescribes her abortion pills for her early stages. She also tells Janine straightforwardly that crisis pregnancy centers actually manipulate women to keep unwanted pregnancies.
• Hanna: Hanna's mother was going to have an abortion until Erik met her outside the clinic. She at first thinks he's from a Catholic group with moral objections, but it turns out he makes her an offer-give her baby up at birth and be paid a lot of money. She agrees.
• Heroes Reborn (2015): Averted in the flashback when Erica's father finds out that she's pregnant and says he'll support whatever decision she makes. She continues her pregnancy though.
• Parodied in HEX in which Cassie vacillates but is finally persuaded to have an abortion after becoming pregnant with The Antichrist. The humor comes when the fetus's demonic father uses undiluted religious pro-life rhetoric to persuade the gynecologist to secretly save the life of the (unnaturally grown) premature infant.
• Frequently subverted in House, usually when there are medical implications:
  • In "Kids," the pregnancy was the underlying cause of the Patient Of The Week's condition. House tells the mother (who is 12-years-old) it has to be terminated.
  • In "Sports Medicine," the patient's wife wants to have an abortion so she can donate a kidney to save her husband. The father so desperately wants his child to be born, though, that he tells House to tell her he'll kill himself if she won't stop considering it. Fortunately, the subsequent confrontation between House and the wife leads to him solving the mystery.
  • In "One Day, One Room", House's patient (after much persuading) adheres to the one exception — that abortion is okay when the pregnancy resulted from rape.
  • Played straight(ish) in "Fetal Position", where a woman refuses to terminate a life-threatening pregnancy, forcing House to perform a risky operation on the fetus in a Shout-Out to Real Life Samuel Armas. He maintains that they took an unacceptable risk to their patient, but starts using the word "baby" over "it" from then on.
• In season seven of How I Met Your Mother Robin has a pregnancy scare after having a one-night stand with Barney and the issue of abortion is never brought up even though Robin has always been adamantly against motherhood. In the end, it turns out that not only is she not pregnant, but she's also infertile. Despite having never wanted children, Robin is upset by the news because she now no longer has the option.
• Humans: Matti wants to have an abortion until Niska reveals the baby is going to be a unique synth-human hybrid, the wave of the future, which convinces her not to.
• Played straight in Inspector George Gently, when a progressive student falls pregnant and decides not to go to Scotland for an abortion (it had been decriminalised there but not in England) even though she has the money and contacts and not having an abortion would mean dropping out of university and returning to her working-class parents to be a single mother, effectively ending her dreams of becoming a lawyer to support the progressive cause.
  • Played straight again in another episode, where Gently arrests an abortionist he catches about to begin the procedure. She had previously discussed it with him, as a hypothetical scenario, and claimed that abortion was for the general good because most of the women coming to her were unable to care for a child, and claimed that abortion would soon be legalized anyway. Unusually Gently, who is for racial tolerance, gay rights, and multiculturalism, is completely opposed to abortion, whereas Bacchus, who would be somewhere between Jack Regan and Gene Hunt if he weren't on a tight leash, is more open to the idea of legalization (perhaps because of his own Shotgun Marriage).
• Charlie Kelly's mother on It's Always Sunny in Philadelphia had an abortion that didn't exactly work out, since three months later Charlie was born. Yes, three months later.
• Averted in Jack & Bobby. Missy gets an abortion after accidentally getting pregnant and it's portrayed as being the right thing for her to do. Ironically her devout Catholic father was more upset about her being pregnant in the first place than he was about her getting an abortion, which is the opposite of how it usually is with religious families on TV shows.
• Jane the Virgin: Jane gets pregnant after her doctor accidentally artificially inseminates her instead of another patient, and ironically Jane has never actually had sex. Despite this, Jane continues with the pregnancy after she learns that the father's only remaining sperm sample was used on her, and she intends to give the baby to the couple. Eventually though, the couple breaks up and Jane and the father, Rafael, decide to raise the baby together. Despite Jane not getting an abortion though, the trope is still sort of subverted. She heavily considers getting one and it is portrayed as an equally valid option.
  • Also that Jane's mother, who isn't considered the "Good Girl", turned down Jane's devout Catholic grandmother's and father's request that she get an abortion when pregnant with Jane. This haunts them.
  • Completely averted when Xo gets pregnant in season 3 after very firmly deciding she didn't want any more kids. She decides to get an abortion and the whole affair is treated matter-of-factly.
• Jessica Jones (2015): Averted. Hope Schlottman is the epitome of the good girl archetype who adamantly refuses to give birth to a child by Kilgrave, and pays her cellmate to beat her up so she will miscarry. When that does not work, Jessica helps her procure abortion pills, and after she physically recovers from the experience she's shown to stand by her decision not to go through with the pregnancy.
• Law & Order: SVU:
  • In "Persona" Linnie/Caroline admits to having an abortion in the 70s after getting pregnant due to being repeatedly raped by her then-husband (whom she killed to stop the abuse). Her original plan was to offer to plead guilty to the crime on the condition that she get a chance to get an abortion before going away, but she was so intimidated by the prosecutor that she ended up escaping from custody, met another man, and (without his knowledge) used money he gave her to get the abortion. The man is upset at her for this, since she knew he wanted children, and says Linnie denied him that (along with grandchildren). Due to this, along with keeping her past secret, he leaves Linnie.
  • In "Dearly Beloved" Kitty became pregnant by her rapist, and thus wants to have an abortion initially as a result. Olivia has mixed feelings about it due to having been conceived by rape herself, as it brings up bad memories about her mother saying she shouldn't have kept her. In the end though Kitty decides to go through with the pregnancy. Olivia lets Amanda think that she had an abortion once in the past and regretted it too, but then says that didn't happen the next episode.
  • Another victim who was impregnated on orders of her father (not by: he was running something of a one-man Breeding Cult) tells Elliot after her father is convicted that she plans to abort. Elliot expresses no specific opinion, and roll credits.
  • In another episode involving a pregnancy pact, Elliot admits that he's personally opposed to abortion, at least when the pregnancy is the result of consensual sex. However, he doesn't let this affect how he does his job.
  • Played straight in "Secrets Exhumed". The tough single career woman Dana Lewis got an abortion only to keep her boyfriend. He then breaks up with her straight afterwards (viewing it only as a casual hookup). She is absolutely devastated and furious, and deeply regrets it — even more so when she finds out that he got his new girlfriend pregnant and got engaged to her. When she finds out about it, she tracks his girlfriend down and brutally murders her, still expressing regret over her decision decades later.
• Law & Order:
  • Discussed but subverted in the episode "Life Choice", in which a pregnant woman is killed in an abortion clinic bombing. It ultimately comes out that the victim, Mary Donovan, was actually at the clinic to have an abortion, but her family didn't want to tarnish her reputation by revealing this, so they let the police believe she suicide-bombed the clinic rather than admit the truth. The leader of the anti-abortion group who planned the bombing insists it was a necessary evil until Ben Stone confronts her with the fact that by killing Mary, she also killed Mary's unborn baby, at which point she breaks down on the stand and is subsequently convicted.
  • In another Season 1 episode, "Out of the Half-Light", the rape of an African-American girl by white cops turns into a witch-hunt against the judicial system after an ambitious Congressman gets involved. It turns out that the girl was never raped; she lied about it knowing this was the only way her strictly religious father would allow her to have an abortion.
• Luke Cage (2016): Mama Mabel took this view, forbidding Mariah from having an abortion when she'd got pregnant due to Pete raping her. Thus her daughter Tilda was passed off as the child of Mariah's husband, then given to another family, the Johnsons.
• The L Word: Kit gets unexpectedly pregnant, and soon decides to have an abortion. Her boyfriend Angus, the father, is wholly supportive along with her friends. They all sympathize after she's tricked by a crisis pregnancy center who try to shame her into choosing against abortion (one nurse even blocking her path out of the exam room), which infuriates Kit. She goes on to get the abortion, and feels slightly sad afterward though comfortable with her decision.
• Played with in Mad Men, naturally. Joan gives a blink-and-you-miss it reference in the first season (roughly, "Are you late again? Do you need to see Doctor Emerson?"), and later Betty Draper, of all people, makes serious inquiries after finding out that she's pregnant while estranged from her husband. And one of her friends knows a doctor. Admittedly she doesn't go through with it, but that has less to do with morality and more with being driven to patch her marriage back together at any cost. Bear in mind that we're in the early 60s here. In the fourth season, Joan reveals that she's had two abortions (or "procedures" as she calls them) and that she's concerned that she might not be able to get pregnant with her husband because of them. She most certainly can and does—but not by her husband, leading to what appears to abortion #3. In the underground clinic she goes to, we see a 17-year-old go in for one as well. However, Joan ultimately keeps the child. In this case they pay lip-service to past abortions, but every woman who gets pregnant on the show keeps the baby. Joan may have had abortions in the past, but she wasn't a good girl-she's keeping this baby, because she's a good girl now. Arguably Peggy Olson's adoption counts as not "keeping" the baby.
• The Magicians (2016): When Julia gets pregnant due to Renard's rape, she decides to have an abortion right away, and this is treated as perfectly acceptable. Kady confides in her that she had an abortion as well (although she's not portrayed as "good" exactly). Julia then gets one from two Korean magicians. Poppy later tells Quentin she was going to have an abortion, but got distracted by attending a ritual and then decided it was a good opportunity to create a dragon-human hybrid.
• On Malcolm in the Middle, the entire family is utterly horrified when Lois becomes pregnant with her fifth child, as their resources are stretched to the snapping point taking care of the kids they already have, but the possibility of abortion is never even brought up. The family are implied to be Roman Catholic, albeit heavily lapsed, and given how strictly many Catholic adhere to this trope, consciously or not, it may well be Truth in Television. In this case the pregnancy plot was created because the actress playing Lois really was pregnant, so it would've been very difficult to hide the pregnancy in the later months, so it's highly unlikely the creators intended to have any message about abortion present in this subplot.
• Averted in the very first TV abortion, that of the 47-year-old protagonist of Maude. No complications are referred to, and her family supports her choice. Her daughter's encouragement included explaining why a 47-year-old shouldn't have a baby, and Adrienne Barbeau played the daughter, who was 27 years old, and provided her mother with an 8-year-old grandson. Ironically, the episode aired before Roe v. Wade became law, but abortion had recently been made legal in New York, which was one of only four states to have abortion on request, with no reason required. Some people interpreted the episode as a subtle PSA regarding this fact.
• Messiah: Felix firmly opposes abortion, and thus he's very upset when Rebecca tells him about having one in the past without his knowledge. After this, he seems to feel it's a personal failure on his part and asks how he can stand beside Al-Masih upon learning this. He's also upset that she and Anna kept this from him.
• Averted with Tina from Midnight Caller, who reluctantly decides to have an abortion to avoid giving AIDS to her daughter. Later played straight by Devon, who decides to keep her baby even though the father is gone and having a child could seriously mess up her career.
• Averted in Misfits: Curtis quickly gets rid of his Gender Bender power after getting his female alter ego pregnant accidentally, effectively aborting that pregnancy. The word isn't used, though Alicia says "There are options, you know" when Melissa!Curtis is worrying over what to do.
• Mohawk Girls: Caitlin isn't happy when her friends note abortion would be one option after she gets pregnant (without actually using the word then), but don't pressure her. She ultimately decides on this after not liking how Butterhead, her boyfriend, treats his other kids and their moms, not wanting to be also like that. She has pretty mixed feelings about it though, and pretends this was a miscarriage since she's afraid of how people would react.
• Mrs. America: Averted, as in real life, Gloria Steinem had a safe but illegal abortion in the past and encourages women in her magazine to speak out about their experiences. In "Gloria" she even speaks to a woman who had an abortion in the past because she and her husband were living in a hotel room with their three children and how it was a hard time for her. Stop ERA activists, though, are firmly against abortion.
• Averted in Murdoch Mysteries: Dr. Julia Ogden reveals that she had an abortion and suffered severe complications, which inspired her friend to become an illegal abortionist-in The Gay '90s in Canada where even contraceptive methods are against the law. She has no regrets, because there was no way she would want to marry her lover, and she wanted to pursue her studies and career. However, it's later revealed that the abortion has left her barren. It's not clear how much she wants kids herself, but she knows the man she loves longs for a family.
• Used in Murphy Brown: Murphy mulls her options after getting pregnant, abortion clearly being one of them. Eventually she decides against it. It's implied that the father assumed she would abort. In a pointed fantasy sequence, she considers aborting the child, only to turn and find the entire Supreme Court wagging their fingers at her in disapproval.
• Neighbours plays this straight on numerous occasions, with at least two stories where a girl was considering an abortion to the point of making an appointment at a clinic, only to be either talked out of it by the father (Bridget and Declan) or distracted by the father being in a fatal accident (Phoebe and Todd). Subverted in the backstory of Charlene Mitchell, however, who got pregnant a year before she joined the show and (as was briefly mentioned onscreen but depicted in one of the tie-in books) chose to secretly induce her own miscarriage with a bottle of gin and a hot bath.
• In the first series of The O.C., Ryan gets a girl pregnant, and she says she's not going to have an abortion. It's quite probably not his, but he won't even consider this, despite the fact that it seems like his ex-girlfriend is trying to force him back into a relationship after her boyfriend — the probable actual father of her child — dumped her. But then, in the next season, she said she had Convenient Miscarriage off-screen and drops off the face of the Earth, only for it to revealed later that she faked the miscarriage and has the kid, who wasn't his anyway.
• One Life to Live:
  • Blair refuses to abort Patrick's baby, despite the utterly disastrous circumstances — Patrick is in a relationship with Marty, while Blair's marriage to Todd is in an upheaval over Todd's return from the dead and the kidnapping of Starr, Blair and Todd's daughter.^note There was the Reality Subtext of Blair's portrayer being pregnant in Real Life and TPTB deciding to write it in Of course, towards the end of her pregnancy, she gets into a car accident and the baby is killed.
  • Later on, Marty herself becomes pregnant and insists that she will have the baby despite the risks to her health, even as Patrick begs her to reconsider (ironic, given his staunch Catholicism), not wanting to lose her.
  • Teenager Jessica Buchanan also decides against an abortion, despite seriously considering it and even initially opting to have one because of similarly bad circumstances — her young age, her not being involved with the baby's father. She also loses the baby at the end of the pregnancy after being hit by a car.
  • Heroine Sarah Gordon conceived after her rape and waffled on whether or not to have an abortion, of course, ultimately miscarrying.
• One of Us is Lying: It's revealed Vanessa's secret is she had an abortion with help from Ms. Avery, who connected her to a doctor and paid for it, as her parents apparently are quite anti-abortion. Addy, her former best friend, reacts in surprise but doesn't judge her. When it's revealed how Ms. Avery helped her though, she gets fired (probably not for aiding in the abortion itself, though, more going around her parents).
• Used in One Tree Hill, where Peyton chooses to continue a pregnancy against medical orders and is seemly quite willing to sacrifice her own life in spartan martyrdom if it saves the life of her unborn child. It's painful not so much because of her reasoning but rather her reaction when Lucas tells her he would rather lose his unborn baby than lose her.
  "Lucas, if you want to talk about it, call it what it is...an abortion!"
  • This occurs many times throughout the series, actually (there are so many teen pregnancies or false alarms in the town that you have to wonder if there's something in the water). Lucas' mother kept him even though it meant dropping out of college, and during both of Brooke's scares, she didn't consider abortion to be an option.
  • The one character that had an abortion in the past was the very pro-life-y "revirginized" leader of the school Clean Teen group (who revealed her past transgressions with a tearful, "I KILLED MY BABY!").
• Orange Is the New Black:
  • Tiffany "Pennsatucky" Doggett was in the clinic for abortion #5, but remembers a conversation she had the night before with her boyfriend/husband/whatever the hell he was, and pulls the IV out. She takes his gun and shoots the nurse that was tending to her because of a snarky comment the nurse made about how many abortions Ms. Doggett has had. The pro-lifers protesting outside the clinic believe she did it to support their cause though. As a result, they give Pennsatucky legal aid and support during her trial and while she is incarcerated for the shooting. Shortly thereafter, Pennsatucky became The Fundamentalist. In season 3, it's implied that she miscarried anyway. She is also shown in the Mother's Day episode to regret the children she aborted (and the one she didn't), giving them names and making a little memorial for them with crosses made out of Popsicle sticks, with each of their names on them. Big Boo talks her out of her funk, by saying that by aborting them, she spared them a miserable life and may have potentially spared the legal system more criminals to deal with, thus doing what was best for them.
  • In the same series, Daya becomes pregnant by a corrections officer that she was in a Secret Relationship with. She doesn't want to get him in trouble, and she knows the baby would be taken away from her after it's born, so she asks her cellmate Gloria to make up an abortifacient herbal tea for her. Later, her heretofore estranged mother reveals that she spoke to Gloria first and told her not to give Daya an abortifacient (it was actually a laxative) as she wants her grandchild. Daya comes to decide to keep the child who turns out to be a daughter but due to circumstances in seasons 4 and 5, eventually decides to place her child for adoption with a woman she had been meeting with in order to give her daughter a better life.
• Orphan Black:
  • Averted in the season 2 finale. Sarah admits that she has had an abortion in the past.
  • Played extremely straight after Helena and Gracie are artificially inseminated with Helena-Henrik embryos. Gracie is understandably disturbed at being impregnated against her will with her father's child.
    Helena: You're a good girl, Gracie, but if you don't want to have my babies, don't have my babies.
    Gracie: I would never do that.
• The Orville: In "Gently Falling Rain" Ed is surprised once Teleya's told him that their daughter would be viewed as an abomination by most Krill that she gave birth to her. Teleya reacts angrily by denouncing the fact that abortions are freqently performed in the Union, saying the Krill loathe the idea. She then shows him that those who have abortions are punished through facing a recreation of the child they would have had as psychological torture, to Ed's dismay.
• Outlander:
  • Louise de Rohan asks Claire to give her an abortifacient after she becomes pregnant due to her affair with Prince Charles. However, Claire warns her that the herb used is highly toxic and very risky to take. She eventually changes her mind and passes the baby off as her husband's.
  • When her daughter Brianna gets pregnant, possibly from rape, Claire offers to do a surgical abortion. Brianna ultimately turns it down.
• Pandora: Jax considers abortion after getting unexpectedly pregnant, although her roommate urges taking her time, stating she'd make a great mother. The issue is avoided as the pregnancy progresses unnaturally fast and she gives birth in around a day.
• Party of Five has Julia getting pregnant at age 16 and the entire episode is a debate over this trope. Julia considers an abortion, and family members and friends offer Julia different perspectives about what to do. Older brother Charlie is supportive of Julia’s decision and tells her about his old college girlfriend who got an abortion. Youngest sister Claudia considers abortion as murder and rebukes Julia. Sarah, an adoptee, tells Julia she wouldn’t be here if her mom chose abortion. Surprise, Julia ends up getting a Convenient Miscarriage before she decides anything. The show's creators revealed the episode was originally written with Julia getting an abortion, but network execs at Fox ultimately vetoed that storyline.
• In Pramface, despite going to a clinic to hear her options, having abortion suggested by her best friend, parents, and worrying about how motherhood is going to work while she's going to university, Laura goes through with her pregnancy.
• On Private Practice when Maya becomes pregnant at the age of 16 her pro-life OB-GYN mother tries to force her to have an abortion. Addison offers to perform the abortion, but once inside the exam room, Maya can't go through with it. She decides to have her baby, which leads to a temporary estrangement from her mother. Eventually, her mother falls in love with the baby once it is born and acknowledges how thankful she is that her daughter chose life.
• Played With in Pretty Little Liars: Original Sin. Imogen planned on raising her baby with the help of her mom. But after her death, when asked what she'll do now she has a panic attack and asks the school nurse how to get an abortion, now that her mom is dead and the baby's father won't help. The nurse is sympathetic but because Imogen is six-months pregnant she tells her, who knew abortion wasn't possible at the time but was feeling overwhelmed, to wait three months to give birth and then put the baby up for adoption.
• Proven Innocent: Explored in "The Shame Game", in which Madeline struggles to exonerate a Muslim woman wrongly convicted for an illegal abortion. Throughout the case, Madeline has to fight against an openly pro-life judge who's blatantly biased against them. Easy too is pro-life, but he takes a much more lenient view, believing that even assuming their client was guilty, twenty five years is excessive punishment and thinks women who have abortions should be treated mercifully.
• Providence Joanie never considers one for either of her out-of-wedlock pregnancies, opting for a Shotgun Wedding in both instances. Neither of which go through—her mother collapses and dies at the first, and by the time they try again, they admit that they're only getting married because of the baby. In the second instance, she has a Convenient Miscarriage and becomes so despondent that she pushes her fiancé away until he finally gives up and leaves her.
• Taken to almost ludicrous levels in Pretty Little Liars. Alison gets pregnant by being forcibly inseminated by one of the series' Big Bads. She first decides on having an abortion (referred to in the show as a 'termination'), but then it turns out that the eggs she was inseminated with belonged to her best friend Emily, who had them frozen for herself to use at some future date. Despite Alison being literally impregnated against her will, that the egg's are Emily's causes the entire cast to act as though Emily has a say in whether Alison has the baby. Eventually Emily tells Alison she wants her to have the baby, and Emily's then-girlfriend Paige breaks up with Emily to let her and Alison be together. Paige also tells Alison she will make a good mother, even though Alison is still undecided in light of this new information. Alison ends up deciding to have the baby, and even though the series gives a fake miscarriage scare carries the baby (babies, as it turns out to be twins) successfully to term. She's happy raising the children with Emily at the end.
• In the miniseries Queen, the titular character is taken to an abortionist after being abandoned by her lover, but she storms out. Whether for moral reasons or because she's terrified of being killed by the untrained woman is unclear.
• Reign: Lola goes off to have one, but is stopped by Mary at the last minute before the operation.
• The Republic of Sarah:
  • Danny got Corinne pregnant years ago before walking out on her, and she declined to get an abortion because she believed he would come back.
  • Averted with Alexis, who gets an abortion without telling her husband about the pregnancy, until AJ unwittingly torpedoes the situation.
• Played with in Roseanne, of all places.
  • Jackie has an unexpected pregnancy and is considering abortion, which her mother is strongly against, only to find out that her and Roseanne's grandmother had two, long, long before they were legal. In the end Jackie opts to keep the baby, though her mother is still horrified that she has no plans to marry the father. (For the record, she eventually does after the baby's born, though even then they eventually divorce.)
  • This comes up in a later episode, when it's possible Roseanne herself may need an abortion when something's thought to be wrong with her 4th baby. The initial episode is where Bev shows how fanatically anti-abortion she is and Nana Mary reveals she had her two, and the next episode has Roseanne feeling pressured to make the decision even though she wants to keep the baby. In the end, all the worry's for naught when it turns out the baby's fine.
• Roswell, New Mexico: Averted when Isolel learns she's pregnant from her dead husband Noah. She agonizes briefly before having an abortion by injecting herself with the serum which Liz made, not wanting to have his child. This is treated pretty neutrally on the show.
• Salem: Nastily averted by Mary, who up to that point seemed quite the good girl. The slave Tituba not only uses magic to abort her child, but it's apparently sacrificed to the Devil as the beginning of Mary's slide into evil. It's later revealed that her child is still alive... raised by the coven.
• In Santa Barbara, Eden got pregnant by her sleazy husband Kirk after he tampered with her birth control pills. Because Eden was a "good girl", she wanted to continue carrying this baby until it was born. But she miscarried it, and she was sad about it. She said, "The baby would have been the only good thing to come out of my marriage. I really would have liked to have had it."
• In The Sarah Silverman Program, Sarah's non-moral (not amoral), and not too bright, character, admits to having had several previous abortions, oblivious to the fact that this is a hot topic, and people may judge her for this. Later, she makes friends with a group of fundamentalist Christian women she meets at a clinic, and they're very nice to her, even though she has had abortions, because they believe she regrets them, and will be a mouthpiece for their cause, talking about how traumatic the experience was. It takes a while for this to dawn on Sarah, who at one point says that not only does she not regret having abortions, but doesn't think she's done having them. Her new "friends" drop her like a hot potato, but she's not too upset, because she's pretty happy-go-lucky. By the end of the episode she's having another abortion.
• Scrubs:
  • Jordan mentioned having an abortion, and although she probably doesn't fall under the category of "good girl", it's notable that though she's shown to feel quite sad when talking to her young child about it, she says it was the most reasonable decision she could have made at the time, as she told the couple (JD and Kim) asking for advice.
  • When J.D. gets his girlfriend pregnant, he has one of his daydreams where he discusses abortions with Jesus:
    Jesus: No abortions!
    J.D.: What if the parents are both drug addicts who'd neglect and abuse the child?
    Jesus: Oh, in that case it would be OK.
    J.D.: Really?
    Jesus: NO abortions! How are you people not getting this?!
    • JD and Kim discuss adoption, but JD rejects that since he thinks that if it were a girl, he might one day in the future end up sleeping with her without knowing she's his adult daughter. They decide to keep the baby and Kim has a miscarriage after she is Put on a Bus. A few months later, after it is revealed that she lied about the miscarriage and that she is still pregnant, Kim gives birth and they raise the child (who is a boy), though they are no longer a couple.
  • A throwaway joke in the fifth season has a priest revealing to JD that he is pro-choice.
• In The Secret Life of the American Teenager, at first it was Amy. To be fair, she considered abortion to the point of going to the abortion clinic, but ultimately realized that she couldn't go through with it and it wasn't the best choice for her. This example was far more prominent later in the series, when bad girl Adrian becomes pregnant and goes through with the pregnancy, using exactly the same reason as Amy, word for word.
• Seinfeld: Discussed in one episode, when Elaine, who's firmly pro-choice, urges Jerry to not eat at a restaurant whose owner supports anti-abortion groups. He challenges this by later asking Poppy, owner of another restaurant they go to, what he thinks of abortion. Turns out he is against it, and Elaine gets into an argument with him. Then this comes up again with a new guy she dates, after Jerry got Elaine to bring it up. He's also pro-life, and they break up over it.
• In Sex and the City, Miranda got pregnant and went for an abortion, but decided to keep the baby at the last minute, though it is mentioned in the same episode that Carrie and Samantha have both had abortions in the past (and Carrie, while shown not to regret her decision, says she still doesn't feel "normal" about it even years later). Miranda was actually sitting in the doctor's office before deciding not to go through with it, despite the uncertainty of her relationship with the baby's father, and declaring, "I can't have a baby. I could barely find the time to schedule this abortion."
• Played somewhat straight in Silk. Main character Martha Costello finds out she's pregnant and immediately calls a clinic to take care of it, but when she misses the appointment due to her work schedule, she decides not to reschedule. When the father asks her where she's going to go for an abortion, she plainly informs him that she's keeping it. Until a crazy ex-client assaults her in the season finale.
• Double subverted and Played for Drama in Shtisel (where all the characters are devout Orthodox Jews).
  • Giti finds out she's pregnant, when she and her husband already have five children. She doesn't tell him, and pretends to go to a women's retreat to cover her visit to a clinic to explore the possibility of an abortion. She has serious doubts, but almost goes through with it until she gets the news that her elderly mother has fallen down a flight of stairs and is in the hospital. She leaves the clinic and rushes to be with her family, deciding to keep the baby.
  • In season 3, it's revealed that Ruchami and her husband tried to have a baby several years ago (during the Time Skip between seasons), but her pregnancy became life-threatening and she had a medically-necessary abortion. They decide to try surrogacy, but at the last minute Ruchami secretly ends the contract with the surrogate and has a doctor remove her IUD so she'll get pregnant. Once again, her pregnancy becomes dangerous and she's rushed to the hospital, but this time both her and the baby survive.
• The Sinner:
  • Cora was raised Catholic, so she wouldn't have an abortion. Rather, she stepped in front of a truck. This led to a miscarriage, though she survived obviously. She seems unaware of the fact this essentially is just abortion by other means. It turns out that she made it all up.
  • Inverted with the cult. They will force female members to have abortions if their pregnancies haven't been "approved" by the leader. However, an exception is made for Marin.
• In the series finale of Sisters, Teddy and her husband learn that their child might be disabled. He's relieved that they've found out in time to have an abortion, but she ultimately refuses, declaring that they can love the child no matter what. In an earlier episode, when she seduces her ex-husband Mitch the night before he's to marry her sister, she gets pregnant from this encounter, but decides not to abort, despite the havoc that will be wreaked, miscarrying once the hoopla dies down.
• Skins averts this trope with Jal so she can go to university.
• Smash concludes with Ivy, who's mostly been portrayed as a good girl despite some bad decisions, choosing not to terminate her pregnancy despite just winning the Tony as the star of a hit Broadway show and the father being a womanizing, sexual harassing jerkass.
• Averted with Tara on Sons of Anarchy, who became pregnant by her boyfriend prior to the start of the series and had an abortion at six weeks. She does not feel guilty about this, but the conflict stems from the fact that her (ex, by the start of the series) boyfriend seems to believe in this trope on top of being more than a little emotionally unstable.
• One plot line on South of Nowhere involved Chelsea getting pregnant from Clay and going for an abortion. At the last minute, she opts out and keeps the baby, which she later loses in a car crash.
• Spartacus: Blood and Sand:
  • Subverted with Aurelia. Aurelia is pregnant via a rapist and abortion doesn't seem to occur to her, even though her husband is disgusted by her carrying another man's baby and she is in a very desperate situation. When Varro apologizes for being a massive douche, he implies that it's up to her whether the baby will be born. After his death, she has it terminated to continue paying off his debt as a slave to Batiatus. This is treated as understandable, and Spartacus merely looks sad that she was left this way.
  • Although Ilithyia isn't actually good, her choice not to have an abortion is viewed positively by both herself and others. It was a complex situation to begin with, as she first intended for this because she'd been planning a divorce from Gaius, but felt hesitant. Then she admits it's not even his, but Spartacus's (due to a deception Lucretia pulled on them), though she's come to desire it nonetheless.
• The Spanish Princess: After getting pregnant from her lover, Rosa asks Lina for help. Lina gets her a potion to cause abortion, but Rosa can't bring herself to use it, instead getting assurances by her lover that he'll care for her and the baby.
• Special Ops: Lioness: Kate miscarries during surgery rather than having to decide whether she'll have an abortion or not. Her mother Joe also chose not to have an abortion after getting unexpectedly pregnant with her.
• Averted on Spenser For Hire, as Susan Silverman has an abortion in spite of Spenser's opposition.
• Unusual example in Stargate SG-1 since Vala is hardly a good girl in the conventional sense and the conversation happens well after the child (who becomes the Big Bad for the rest of the series) was born.
  Vala: What, you don't think I'd want to be responsible for the enslavement of an entire galaxy, do you?
  Daniel: It was hardly your fault.
  Vala: I knew she was the will of the Ori even before she was born. I could have done something about it, but I didn't.
  Daniel: She was your child.
  Vala: Maternal instinct can only excuse so much.
• On Stargate Universe, when T.J. tells Colonel Young that she's pregnant with his child, preempts any mention of abortion with the statement "I'm keeping it." In this case, performing an abortion would have been rather tricky given their limited medical supplies, even if a doctor could have been brought in via the stones.
• Played With in the Star Trek: The Original Series episode "The Mark Of Gideon", the leadership of the titular planet is faced with an overpopulation disaster. Kirk, being from the twenty third century, suggests they simply use contraception or "other safe methods" which the Federation's medical technology can provide- only for the leaders to declare they hold life too sacred to resort to such practices. This being The '60s, of course the 'A word' can't be mentioned directly, but it is made clear what they are talking about. Considering that the planet's 'solution' to the problem involves spreading a deadly plague among their populace (beginning with the Girl of the Week ), Kirk and the crew considers this more outright insane than just hypocritical. Unfortunately, the political situation means the crew can't get involved, and the culling-via-plague is put into effect.
• In the Star Trek: The Next Generation episode "The Child", Troi gets pregnant by mysterious means and Worf suggests as a precaution that the pregnancy be terminated. However, Troi shoots that idea down: "I am having this baby."
• Star Trek: Enterprise:
  • The episode "Unexpected" features a rare male variation when Trip Tucker gets pregnant after a run-in with an alien species. His first thought upon learning that he's pregnant is whether or not the embryo can be safely removed without killing it, which would require tracking down the aliens responsible. As time goes by and finding them seems less and less likely, he resigns himself to the idea of birthing and caring for his "child" — which, fortunately, is when they finally locate the aliens and get them to put the embryo into another parent.
  • In the Season 3 episode "Chosen Realm", we get a Type 3 situation: members of an alien religious cult have hijacked the ship, though in private one of their female members asks Dr. Phlox if he can perform an abortion for her, because she's actually horrified by their over-zealous leader and doesn't want to bring a child into the world under his leadership. Phlox and the rest of the crew don't consider this a controversial request whatsoever, but the cult leader gets overthrown by the end of the episode, so the pregnant woman decides it's safe to keep her baby.
• In season five of Stromberg, Jennifer gets pregnant by Stromberg. It was unwanted and she seriously considers the option of abortion, but then decides against it, after some persuasion by Ernie. Then she miscarries.
• Strong Medicine Despite an amniocentesis report that states that her child will have Cri Du Chat syndrome, Lu adamantly refuses to consider an abortion. This is someone who has been well established as a staunch supporter of abortion rights. Lu herself discusses this point and argues that pro-choice means the right to keep a pregnancy just as much the right not to, and she will respect other women's choices regardless of whether or not she would make the same one.
• On Switched at Birth it's played very straight with Lily. Despite the fact that she and the father are both 21, they broke up after it was conceived, he is unemployed and she is barely making enough money, and the fact that the baby has Down Syndrome, they decide to keep the baby. Abortion is contemplated seriously though, with them acknowledging that neither of them have the emotional maturity or money to give a special needs child everything it deserves. And most of their friends and family are hoping she aborts, with the exception of Daphne who out of nowhere became firmly pro-life.
• Averted in Tenko where almost all of the women agree Dorothy's abortion is necessary and the best choice to make.
• The first episode of That's My Bush! has a highly fictionalized George W. Bush trying to unite both sides of the abortion issue in a summit. It fails spectacularly, when the pro-choice spokeswoman (a stereotypical Straw Feminist) gets mistaken for a stripper, and the pro-life spokesmen (a survived aborted fetus, which has happened in real life) gets dragged off by a dog. Laura Bush comforts Bush by telling him that those who believe that the unborn have a right to life and those who believe that a women has final say on her body will never see eye to eye as because at the end of the day they are both sort of right.
• The trope is toyed with in an early episode of Third Watch. Officer Yokas gets pregnant, but given her family's financial difficulties and the stresses of her job, decides she wants an abortion. Her husband encourages her to keep it. During a foot chase, a thug hits her in the stomach with a pipe, which, she tells her husband, caused a Convenient Miscarriage. She's later shown getting an abortion. The moral issue in this case seemed to be presented not as the abortion itself, but that she lied to her husband in order to avoid having to talk or argue about it.
  • This trope also provided the motive for murder in a later episode. An Iranian girl was murdered in an alley, and when the coroner found that she was two weeks pregnant, Yokas presumed it was a honor killing, until she revealed it to the father who was just as surprised to know. The murderer turned out to be her Rich (and White) Bastard Boyfriend, who tried to pressure her to abort, even by offering to pay for the procedure, but she refused, and he ended up pushing her to the ground, crushing her head.
• Played straight on Touched by an Angel (unsurprising, given the show's heavy religious overtones). When a woman learns that her unborn child will be afflicted with Down's Syndrome, her husband practically browbeats her into having an abortion, as he doesn't want a mentally disabled baby. While sitting in the doctor's office she comes to the realization that she wants the baby no matter what and walks out. When her husband tries to make her feel like a hypocrite, citing all the work she's done for abortion rights, she declares, "I'm still pro-choice. And I just made one. I'm having this baby."
• Arlene of True Blood finds herself pregnant with her serial killer ex-husband's baby, which she decidedly doesn't want. However, she's against abortion, and instead tries to get a witch to do a magical abortion (which she, for some reason, considers OK). It doesn't work.
• Twin Peaks:
  • Dick wants Lucy to abort their supposed child, and she is disgusted.
  • Nicky's mother became pregnant after being raped, decided to keep the baby and died in childbirth. The story makes Dick and Andy burt into tears.
  • Averted in "The Secret Diary of Laura Palmer" which reveals that Laura found out she was pregnant on her 16th birthday and decided to abort, having no idea who the father was. Given what is revealed on the show, the father could have been her own father.
• Underground: Clara asks Ernestine for something that'll make her miscarry, but later decides that she wants the baby. Hicks forces her to drink the potion anyway. Clara wants to kill Ernestine and Hicks for causing the loss of her child.
• In the 2012 Upstairs Downstairs, Lady Persie insists upon an (illegal) abortion and does go through with it; this is played as another sign of what an infinitely petty and morally bankrupt individual she is.
• V1983: Robin, when near full term, becomes convinced that something is wrong with her pregnancy, pleading for an abortion. Father Andrew, of course, as the Catholic priest in the cell opposes this (and not just on moral grounds-he argues a Half-Human Hybrid is too extraordinary to not preserve). Her father Robert and Julie though agree with Robin. When they attempt to abort though it turns out the fetus is bonded with her body too much for safe removal, so she's nearly killed before they stop.
• Vida: Averted. Emma gets abortion pills immediately after discovering she's pregnant, which is treated matter of factly by her and Lyn (the only other person who knows). In fact Lyn mentions she'd once used the same means to have an abortion herself before.
• Lori from The Walking Dead discovers she is pregnant and acquires morning-after pills to deal with it, since they're currently experiencing a zombie apocalypse with all its related horrors, but ends up throwing them back up and going through with the pregnancy.
• War of the Worlds (2019): Sophie gets pregnant by her boyfriend in Season 2. At first she gets abortion drugs, feeling that bringing a child into the current world would be wrong. However, she's hesitant and doesn't use them right away. After her sister Catherine learns about it, she convinces Sophie to have the baby, saying she'd be a great mother (having already basically adopted a boy earlier) and her having a child will give them both something that will help them keep going. Nathan, her boyfriend, is also delighted on learning she's pregnant (he wasn't privy to the discussion). However, she's not actually treated as bad for having considered abortion, so this is a largely downplayed example.
• The West Wing season five episode "The Supremes" averts this a scene in which two of the White House staff are interviewing a potential candidate for the Supreme Court. When asked whether she has done anything that would make her confirmation difficult, she offhandedly replies that she stole a book, bought a marijuana plant for her roomie, and had an abortion. Cue minor Heroic BSoD. Important to note that they were only worried about the political implications. None of the protagonists thinks any less of her for it, and they subsequently do nominate her.
• Why Women Kill: April decides to have an abortion when she's gotten pregnant by Rob, who's married, saying she can't care for a baby alone. Beth Ann isn't happy with this, but mostly worried by her going to a back alley abortionist who might injure or kill her accidentally due to ignorance or the unsanitary conditions. She talks April out of it due to the danger.
• Several times on Without a Trace:
  • Agent Samantha Spade never considers one despite previously being ambivalent about having children, conceiving from a one-night stand and not even remembering the guy's name. (TPTB opted to write in the actress' Real Life pregnancy instead of concealing it).
  • Another character's girlfriend refuses to have one, citing that unlike him, she doesn't already have kids, and given her age, it's her last chance to do so. She eventually miscarries, making the debate moot.
  • In another episode, we learn that the Victim of the Week told his girlfriend to "take care of it" when she told him she was pregnant. He's stunned when she resurfaces 18 years later with his teenage son, telling him "This is how I 'took care of it'!"
• Yellowjackets: Subverted, as Shauna wants to have an abortion (because she's pregnant from her best friend's boyfriend, plus being stuck in the wilderness is a terrible place to have a baby) and Taissa doesn't object to that, but rather a dangerous self-induced method which could kill her. She ends up helping Shauna, but stops when it's hurting her too much.
• You Me Her: After she gets accidentally pregnant from Jack, Emma isn't sure what she wants and considers having an abortion. Jack isn't happy at the idea, pointing out they had been trying to have a baby for seven years and urges against it. Her girlfriend Kylie on the other hand doesn't want kids, offering to be with Emma at the clinic. Emma ultimately decides to have the baby, wanting to be a throuple with Jack and Izzy again as co-parents. Kylie dumps her at once on learning Emma's keeping it.
• The Young and the Restless Sharon got pregnant to shore up her marriage to Nick. His angry reaction (they had agreed to wait a while before having children) made her decide to terminate the pregnancy, only for Nick to barge into the exam room and talk her out of it.
• Y: The Last Man (2021): Kimberly, after learning Christine's unsure what to do about her surprise pregnancy, offers to adopt her baby and or give her support as she knows she's considering abortion.

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