Abortion isn't the taboo topic it once was on television. In the past year alone, several series incorporated storylines that showed characters terminating pregnancies in different ways and for a variety of reasons. On The Fosters, Lena (Sherri Saum) has a late-term abortion when she develops life-threatening preeclampsia. On Scandal , Olivia (Kerry Washington) has an abortion while Mellie (Bellamy Young) filibusters in the Senate to stop the defunding of Planned Parenthood. On Girls , Mimi-Rose (Gillian Jacobs) casually mentions to Adam (Adam Driver) that she can't go running with him because she got an abortion the day before. All of these on-air depictions of pregnancy termination help shed light on a topic that's fraught with emotional, ethical, and other repercussions.Still, we've never seen as genuine and well-articulated a depiction of abortion on television as the November 20 episode of Please Like Me , which airs Friday nights on Pivot. The episode follows Claire (Caitlin Stasey) through the entire process of having a medical abortion. Actually, the story starts in the previous week's episode, when Claire tells Josh (Josh Thomas, the series' creator and star, who also co-wrote this installment) that she's pregnant."I'm pregnant, in my belly. There is a human forming in my belly, and I have to get an abortion. Obviously, I refuse to feel bad about it, because they are just cells, and every time they decide to multiply, they are making a horrible decision, and they need to be stopped," Claire says. She's only telling Josh because she needs him to take her to the clinic. "Okay, so that's done," Claire affirms before jogging off.Thomas — who, it should be noted, is very dry and matter-of-fact, and also refers to women as “girls” in conversation — tells Refinery29 that the decision to make Claire have an abortion didn't take much thought. "Honestly, I think one of my friends was like, 'Why doesn't one of your characters have an abortion? Why hasn't that happened?' I thought about it for awhile, and I was like, 'Yeah, that's weird,'" Thomas says. "Girls have abortions [sometimes], you know? This is a thing that happens. Let's be honest about what happens in the world."He was surprised by the response to the episode, even during the writing stage. "For two weeks, all I talked about was abortion," Josh says. "Anytime I said to a girl, 'Claire's going to have an abortion,' they would have a story about themselves. I've never done a storyline where people wanted to have as much input and be like, 'This should happen, and this should happen. This never happens on TV, but this is what happens in real life.' They really got fired up about it, in a positive way."It's a not-quite-confident Claire who greets Josh's character on the morning of the procedure. She asks him if he thinks she's making the right decision. She reminds him that they've talked about raising kids together, and even though it's a big thing, maybe they could keep this baby and try it. Josh assumes Claire is joking, because he's never seen her waffle this much, especially about something this serious.When they arrive at the clinic, though, Claire is back to being her confident self. "I am very excited to exercise my right to decide what happens to my body today," she asserts as they open the door. Josh then acts as an audience surrogate as he's informed, in great detail, about what exactly happens during a medical abortion. "I did a lot of research," Thomas notes. "I co-wrote the episode with Liz Doran...We spoke to family-planning clinics."