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A few weeks back we nominated the complete absence of "shmamortion" in the movies as the bad sex idea of 2007. (Little did we know then that life would be imitating art in the uterus of Jamie Lynn Spears.) But it didn't start with Knocked Up, Juno, and Waitress; as our friend Josh Glenn notes in his Boston Globe blog, the "Papa don't preach, I'm keeping my baby" has been around since, well, since mid-eighties Madonna. In case you'd forgotten just how many pregnancy scare plotlines 90201 and Melrose Place puked out between them, Josh has put together a timeline of unplanned pregnancies, abortions, and conveniently timed miscarriages in U.S. pop culture since the seventies. And it turns out that each decade features a distinct M.O. for characters facing an unwanted pregnancy.

In the Roe v. Wade seventies: Yes, have an abortion, you'll be okay. In the eighties: Keep the baby, you can do it so long as you're a mature adult. In the nineties: Have an abortion, it's okay...but wait! I wanna keep the baby even if I'm not a mature adult! And now the oughts: Keep the baby, don't think twice.

When mapped out like this, it doesn't exactly look like a path of progress. But when we find ourselves in times of trouble, the Onion website comes to us, speaking words of wisdom...one of our favorite headlines from last year was Actress' Abortion Written Into TV Show: "It would've been insulting to our viewers if we never addressed the fact that Kirsten is so obviously post-abortion," executive producer Aaron Karsch said. "We did consider shooting around the abortion and using lighting tricks and strategically placed plants to cover up her uterus. But everyone would have been able to tell anyhow, so we figured we might as well use it to the show's advantage."

And if that doesn't restore your faith in American pop culture, then check out this heartwarming clip from South Park's "Woodland Critter Christmas" episode a few years back, when Stan takes some mountain lion cubs to the abortion clinic to learn how the procedure is performed. You gotta love Stan's fight with the voiceover guy and his sotto voce comment that "This better have a point." (Also, we highly enjoyed the fact that that right after watching the clip, we were shown a trailer for Juno. Isn't it ironic, dontcha think?)