Did pop culture eschew abortion entirely in 2007? The moralistic right wing commentators are sure happy about movies that herald shotgun marriage following one-night-stand and an adulterous waitress having a baby, while in “real” life, the good little sister of the year’s baddest gal, Jamie Lynn Spears, is making what anti-choice folks deem the “right” decision by having a baby—father not officially named—at the ripe old age of sixteen. What makes all this sex—extramarital, underage—worthy of the right wing’s glorification? According to Rick Santorum, what’s important is Hollywood viewing ultrasound pictures as first baby pics. (Smile, you’re in utero!). To him, those pictures utter not 1,000 words, just three: abortion is wrong.

Movies like Knocked Up struck some ambivalent chords with progressive people. Even the film’s lead, Katherine Heigl, admitted the film wasn’t exactly a feminist call to arms. Its message: men can be overgrown boys, kind of piggish ones at that, and still get the pretty girl (and, oh, the baby too). Many wondered whether the movie was anti-abortion-shmashmortion.

Whatever the case Knocked Up, with its critical comic childbirth scene, couldn’t have been a movie had she gotten an abortion. Choosing themes like adoption or raising unplanned babies doesn’t mean that the entire celluloid world has taken a stance against abortion. Yet, this crop of films and this knocked up teen star do, at the very least, reflect back to us our collective increasing discomfort with abortion. Although abortion remains legal—if not accessible—and although over a third of all women will have had an abortion by the age of 45, abortion has become unseemly, a thing of distaste and shame.

Even information is becoming offensive. Abstinence only sex education stopped providing young people with facts about conception and contraception. Lo and behold, teen pregnancy rates rose for the first time since 1991. HIV rates are on the rise amongst young gay men. There’s a kind of tripped up logic going on here. Isn’t it less of a big deal to inform young people about contraception and sexually transmitted infections than for them to face unplanned pregnancies or dangerous infections? Last time I checked, the answer to those questions is still yes .

These days, even amongst those in favor of “choice,” abortion is viewed as a regretful, far lesser option. In 1988, Katha Pollitt wrote in an essay that abortion is essentially a “bloody, clumsy method of birth control.” Describing how her friends had gotten pregnant for reasons like the one time in 13 years he forgot a condom or her thinking she couldn’t get pregnant while breastfeeding a 6 week old, Pollitt reminded us that in real life mistakes happen. Mistakes are part of life, no big deal. Abortion, she explained, is one method of remedying certain errors. In 1988, Pollitt admitted concern about the essay’s reception; 20 years later, her thinking might well offend those professing to support less the reality than the euphemism of “choice.”

Meanwhile, Jamie Lynn may find her choice—her moral or career saving or heart’s desire choice—to have a baby the harder path six months or two or twelve years from now. Babies, even for the wealthy, are not so easy (just ask her sister). Parenthood’s rocky road, be it through adoption, one night stand or teen passion, gets glossed over by Hollywood’s vision of b-a-b-y as happily ever after. Abortion, in contrast, is oft portrayed as a cold, seedy, desperate alternative (on the short-lived television series Jack and Bobby , a minister’s daughter has an abortion, is kicked out of her parents’ house and dies in a car crash). Abortion, leading to parental rejection, self-destructive behavior and death, just is not as funny as one-night-stand-goes-awry-boy-gets-girl (awry equals baby in this case). Having an abortion isn’t necessarily easy and it’s certainly not glamorous. But abortion is a way of saying no to parenthood at a given moment . By demonizing it, abortion is made to be so much of a bigger deal than it is or at least than it needs to be astounds me. Hollywood’s tales aside, without being able to tell these private stories, ones of decisions carried out not lightly but securely, we lose all humane capacity for error.