Did you know that one in three women will have an abortion by the time she’s 45? My guess is probably not – and why would you? The fact that women seriously consider and go through with their decision to abort unwanted pregnancies will come as a surprise to many, a problem not helped by cinema’s history of depicting abortion as a taboo issue. Cinema has only served to strengthen the stigmas that have long been surrounding the procedure – but with new dramedy Grandma, released this Friday, abortion’s stigmas could finally be on the cusp of shattering.

In Grandma, Lily Tomlin plays a lesbian poet named Elle who is visited by her 18-year-old pregnant granddaughter who needs money for an abortion. Elle is broke, so the two set out on a road trip in an attempt to recoup the money she’s owed from old friends in order to fund the procedure.

Abortion is a serious and ever-present issue. As Elle tells her granddaughter, Sage (Julia Garner), making that decision is something she will think about every day for the rest of her life. Grandma’s script (written by director Paul Weitz) shows it’s constantly aware that abortion is a common occurrence. Yet, the way he injects humour via Tomlin’s take-no-prisoners character is a savvy decision that grounds the film in a refreshing sense of realism. Here is a drama that humanises a character who has decided to have an abortion which – along with fellow comedy Obvious Child (2014) – would have been unheard of not even five years ago. Bear in mind the only two post-2000 films about abortion were Vera Drake and 4 Months, 3 Weeks and 2 Days (2007) which both focused on its illegality.

This isn’t to say that comedy films in the past – namely Juno and Knocked Up (both 2007) – have flat out ignored abortion; when their respective lead characters get pregnant, the procedure is an option that is considered, albeit in differing ways. Ellen Page’s eponymous lead in Jason Reitman’s teenage pregnancy comedy at first plans to go through with her decision but, upon learning her unborn baby has fingernails, decides against it.

Conversely, in Knocked Up – a film criticised by its own lead actress for its portrayal of female stereotypes – Katherine Heigl’s Izzy falls pregnant after a drunken one night stand and never once considers having an abortion; fine, but the father Ben (Seth Rogen) and his friends do, in turn treating abortion as a word that shouldn’t be uttered (they opt for calling it “the A word” instead).

“Grandma never once leads to a scene where Sage doubts her decision or, worse, dwells on these events as fate intervening. In fact, we never even see Sage come to the decision – when she appears on screen, her mind has been made up”

Both films showcase different sentiments on the subject, while also withholding a common consensus: abortion is simply an unviable option. As a consequence, these films took leaps backwards when it came to educating audiences on the subject.

The aforementioned Obvious Child was the first real candid depiction of abortion that wasn’t afraid to inject comedy into its story. The film follows Jenny Slate’s comedienne Donna Stern who is forced to confront the realities of independent womanhood when she discovers she is unexpectedly pregnant. She confronts the issue, she makes the decision and she goes through with it; the film is spared of any last-gasp change of heart or moment of enlightenment that what she is doing may be ‘the wrong thing.’

The same can be said for Grandma; with Elle and Sage meeting roadblocks at every turn – the unborn baby’s father refuses to provide money; an old pro-life flame of Elle’s flat out refuses to fund such an act; hell, even the car breaks down on the way to the clinic – the film never once leads to a scene where Sage doubts her decision or, worse, dwells on these events as fate intervening. In fact, we never even see Sage come to the decision – when she appears on screen, her mind has been made up. In many ways, these hurdles highlight how – even in this day and age – a woman’s autonomy over her own body is still not as simple as it should be.

These films go some way to successfully reflect how, for many women, abortion is an unpleasant but necessary act. Even television is embracing this notion (Grey’s Anatomy, Girls, to name but a few). It’s taken time, but it feels like popular culture just might have realised that stigmatising abortion is just another way of demonising something which is a woman’s reproductive right.

Consider the following: the Department of Health’s end of year report in 2014 found that the abortion rate was highest for women aged 22 (28 per 1,000). Quite simply, that’s a cold hard fact – and a stat that is more real than anything cinema could ever conjure. Thankfully, however, it seems Hollywood is beginning to pay attention.

Grandma is out in cinemas Friday, 11 December