Obviously, and without regret

NOTE: This review contains spoilers.

WHEN MY friend Elizabeth and I came out of the movie theater after seeing the new film Obvious Child, she shook her head and, laughing, said, "I can't believe I actually just saw that in a movie theater."

That's because, for once, we saw a film that treats having an abortion not as a horrible tragedy, an agonizing decision or a matter of gut-wrenching regret, but as a simple fact of life. In fact, you could even call Obvious Child an "abortion romantic-comedy" (though, as writer-director Gillian Robespierre says, to call it that "implies that we aren't taking the subject seriously. We absolutely are.")

Based on a 2009 short film directed by Robespierre, Obvious Child stars Parks and Rec's Jenny Slate as Donna, a young, struggling New Yorker who uses her somewhat messy life as fodder for her stand-up comedy. Unceremoniusly dumped by her skeezy boyfriend, Donna drunkenly exorcises her demons in a particularly brutal stand-up routine--and hooks up with the impossibly clean-cut Max afterward. To her horror, she later finds herself pregnant.

But here's where Obvious Child does something almost unique for a movie (and certainly unique for a romantic-comedy)--Donna decides to have an abortion, recognizing that she's in no way equipped to be a mother.

Her decision isn't filled with angst. The only angst in the film--and the comedic opportunities that result--come from the other decisions she has to make: Can she afford the $500 cost? Should she tell the one-night stand? Her mother? And, hilariously, what date should she schedule her abortion for--Valentine's Day or her mother's birthday?

When Donna tells Nelly, her funny and somewhat strident progressive best friend (who works at "Un-oppressive, Non-imperialist Bargain Books"--and yes, it's a real place!), Nelly doesn't judge or make her feel ashamed. Later, when Donna asks if Nelly ever thinks of her own abortion years earlier, Nelly tells her she does think about it sometimes, but "never ever regrets it"--though she feels sad for her teenage self having to navigate it.

In some ways, Obvious Child feels more like a fairy tale than a romantic-comedy. Or maybe, to conservatives, a horror movie. Not only does the film show a funny, guilt-free, one-night stand, but not a single person in Donna's life tries to make her feel guilty about her decision to have an abortion.

And thank god for that. I don't need another cinema guilt-trip "but-don't-you-secretly-really-want-this-baby" speech--and from the laughs in the audience, it seems clear other people don't need it either.

I SUPPOSE some people might wonder about the "tastefulness" of a comedy about abortion. After all, shouldn't the decision to have an abortion be shown as fraught, given the political climate in the U.S.?

Well, no. Though we're told by many voices that abortion is a "sad, even tragic choice" (thanks, Hillary Clinton!) the reality is that many women feel relief afterward--something you'd never know, even from the rare Hollywood films that actually acknowledge abortion.

In those movies, if the character gets anywhere near an abortion clinic, she usually is wracked with guilt or shame (or harassed by protesters, like in Juno). Before she actually has an abortion, she might suffer a miscarriage--the "easy out" for movies and television shows that want to suggest they're pro-choice without having to confront a character actually going through with an abortion.

Or, worse, she might die--a cinematic "punishment" for her choice. According to a study in the journal Contraception that tracked 310 television and movie plotlines involving abortion in the U.S., 13.5 percent of the stories ended with the death of the woman, whether she has an abortion or not.

In the real world, however, the probability of a woman in the U.S. dying from a legal abortion is almost negligible--about one in a million. According to the Guttmacher Institute, less than 0.05 percent of women having an abortion in the first trimester will experience any major complication, making a first-trimester abortion "one of the safest medical procedures, with minimal risk," the Institute reports.

For many of the one-third of American women who will seek an abortion in their lifetime, abortion is not nearly so awful as Hollywood seems intent on making us believe--something writer-director Robespierre brilliantly portrays. As she recently explained to the Washington Post:

We didn't want a scene where [Donna is] deliberating and crying. She's still feeling a lot of things that are not easy emotions, but she's just not ready, and she knows she's not. We wanted to show something where people in her life weren't judging her, where she wasn't judging herself, and also show a very safe, positive experience in the health center.

That's ultimately the most refreshing thing about Obvious Child. Here's a young woman, financially insecure, who's very sure that she's not ready to be a mother--a situation that thousands of women find themselves every year. The movie doesn't judge Donna for wanting an abortion or view the pregnancy as some sort of "punishment" for casual sex. And it doesn't show the supposed "downside" of abortion--with the exception of the worry she feels in trying to come up with the $500 cost.

And having an abortion doesn't become some tragic "obstacle" standing in the way of her and the "good guy." (And if the character of Max is a bit underdeveloped, it's because he is a bit of a "type"--an inverse of the "manic-pixie" dream girl we see so often in male-oriented romantic-comedies.)

RECENTLY, EMILY Letts, a patient advocate at an abortion clinic, made headlines when she filmed herself having a surgical abortion. The resulting three-minute video went viral.

Letts, who's in her 20s, resembles Donna in that she wasn't ready to have a child, and felt no regret or shame about getting an abortion. As Letts explained about her decision to film herself:

I searched the Internet, and I couldn't find a video of an actual surgical procedure in the clinic that focused on the woman's experience. We talk about abortion so much, and yet no one really knows what it actually looks like. A first trimester abortion takes three to five minutes. It is safer than giving birth...

Yet women come into the clinic all the time, terrified that they are going to be cut open, convinced that they won't be able to have kids after the abortion. The misinformation is amazing, but think about it: They are still willing to sacrifice these things because they know that they can't carry the child at this moment.

After the video went viral, Letts received the predictable mountain of threats and hate mail--but also heard from many women, like one who had had an abortion the same week and was feeling guilty after her boyfriend called her a "killer."

It's refreshing to hear stories from women like Letts--and their fictional counterparts like Donna. That Obvious Child can tell such a story while also being sweetly hilarious makes it even more worth seeing.