Jane The Virgin Doesn't Shrink From Its Support Of Responsible Family Planning

If you've watched TV at any point in the last...ever, you've probably had the experience of seeing a show you really loved mishandle an unplanned-pregnancy plotline. A woman might decide to terminate only to be "saved" at the last minute by a convenient miscarriage (Party Of Five). A woman might decide to terminate only to bow to pressure -- both from her partner and from society in general -- and change her mind, deciding against all logic and sense to become a mother in her first year of college and with a man she barely knows (Beverly Hills, 90210). In last week's season premiere of Jane The Virgin, we learned that Xiomara intended not to carry her accidental pregnancy to term. In this week's episode, we find out that she meant it, and: holy shit. That's awesome.

To be clear: it's not awesome that a (fictional) embryo, conceived in a careless, loveless assignation, did not grow into a baby that might have gone to a (fictional) loving adoptive home. Even your most ardently pro-choice hardcore feminists -- hello! -- recognize that an abortion is an undesirable consequence of unprotected sex, and work toward the goal that the procedure be safe, legal, and rare. What's awesome is that, for once, a show has handled an unplanned pregnancy so well, the whole way through.

The groundwork for this plotline started back in Season 2, when Rogelio proposed to Xiomara and she turned him down on the grounds that she didn't want to have any more children. Jane has always done a great job, with these two characters, in portraying the challenges people face when they enter into a relationship in their forties, and this one made sense for them both: Rogelio, as a famous, successful man, has fewer concerns about procreating later in life than Xo, who wants to try to make it in show business now that she's no longer actively raising her child -- and who, though it doesn't come up, also might not want to take on the risks of a geriatric pregnancy (literally, that's what they're called, just to make you good and scared of what kind of spawn might result from your old-ass eggs). Xo and Ro love each other, but they're also both mature adults, and neither wants to limit the other's dreams by keeping them from finding partners who share their different visions for their futures.

Xo laid out her reasons for terminating her pregnancy in the season premiere, telling Rogelio, "I didn't want to have a baby with you, who I love so much. I'm not having a baby with Esteban." Xo has no romantic idea of seeing an unplanned pregnancy to term in order to lock down her baby's feckless father, and yes, in fact, that is what I think is happening with most of the girls on 16 And Pregnant who aren't Christian and/or who stayed in denial about their pregnancies past the point where an abortion was even possible. Xo is an adult. She's been through this before. She knows what it's like. She already made the choice with Jane not to involve Rogelio in Jane's childhood, so she probably wouldn't do that again -- and since Esteban is hardly someone she wants in her life until one of the three of them dies, his identity is a consideration in her decision.

But the very best part of Xo's abortion storyline is how matter-of-fact it is. Xo chooses not to remain pregnant. She tells the people in her life she knows will support her -- Rogelio and (apparently, offscreen) Jane -- what her intentions are. And the next time we hear about it, it's already done, as the narrator tells us: "Xo didn't have the stomach flu a few weeks ago. She had a medication abortion." Which is to say: it happened offscreen. We didn't have to watch her dithering about her decision, reversing herself, wondering if she owed it to the embryo or to Esteban to do something different. (Esteban doesn't seem to know anything at all about it, which is, based on what we know of him, surely the right call on Xo's part. Vegan smoothie in a Mason jar, my ass.) We didn't have to see her being confronted by protestors at a clinic or counseled by her physician to consider all the options that she, a mother in her forties, would obviously already know. Xo decided to end her pregnancy. Then she ended it. THIS FEELS REVOLUTIONARY.

This is not to say that there aren't any consequences Xo has to deal with after the fact: when a health insurance bill arrives at the house, Alba has questions, which leads to an actually kind of comic storyline in which Xo tries to figure out whether Alba already knows what happened and is trying to trap Xo into admitting it. It turns out that she doesn't, and when Xo does tell her, a few days' worth of the silent treatment ensue -- as does a reprise of Alba's remorse for having suggested that Xo get an abortion back when Xo was pregnant with Jane. But Alba's grown a lot even since the first season of the show, and she manages to understand even this: "I don't agree with your decision, but it's your decision. We're different. The end." One imagines that, when Mateo moves out with Jane and Michael and a blessed silence descends upon the house, Alba might even come to appreciate Xo's consideration in sparing both of them from many more years of kid crap.

The whole of "Chapter Forty-Six" proves Jane The Virgin's ongoing commitment to advocating for social justice -- in ways large and small, serious and silly -- through its characters' stories. Jane and Michael both admit to one another that they're experiencing PTSD since his shooting and have to talk about it and deal with it rather than be ashamed about it. Rogelio decides to quit trying to mask his identity to become a crossover star in the U.S. and instead help the U.S. to embrace him and Tiago as they are. Even Jane's admission that Mateo is being a little shit and that it's okay if she's not always handling motherhood with the degree of perfection her Type A personality might aim for feels radical and bold. (As I wrote last season, Jane's portrayal of the guilt all mothers are subject to is one of its most important, most feminist concerns.) But for me, the episode's best moment is the one that's barely a moment at all: just fifteen words of exposition about a woman exercising control over her life. It's about time, TV.