Obvious Child isn’t like most romantic comedies and it’s not because the film follows Donna, a comedian and newly unemployed book seller, who terminates an unplanned pregnancy after a one night stand. It’s different because the female lead (played by Jenny Slate) is a well-developed, perfectly imperfect, funny woman—a real rarity in the films Hollywood is currently cranking out. I spoke with the Obvious Child director Gillian Robespierre via telephone in New York about this romantic-comedy that tackles abortion as just one of an infinite number of things that can happen to a woman in her twenties.

SDTC: How and why did you go about making Obvious Child?
GR: The movie started as a short film and then we eventually wanted to make a full length movie that would feature a funny leading lady. We made the movie because we were disenchanted by the representation of women in movies. They didn’t look like us or act like us. We also wanted to address abortion—to humanize choice through humor.

How much responsibility did you feel dealing with this subject matter?
We felt mostly responsible to make it funny. We wanted to make funny jokes and craft a funny, well-developed female character. Tackling abortion didn’t feel so heavy. We just wanted to make sure it was accurate and show what it’s actually like to have an abortion. We showed the script to Planned Parenthood to ensure accuracy and actually filmed some parts of the movie in a Planned Parenthood in Westchester.

Donna struggles to keep her private life and professional life as a stand-up comedian separate. Do you face problems like this in your own career?
During the filming of this movie Liz Holmes and I both had intense day jobs. It was a struggle to find the balance between creating art and making money. Luckily I had Liz to lean on in many ways. We managed to keep it all together. I’m getting married in October and Liz just made a table with her partner, which is amazing, I can’t even make an IKEA table.

How do you feel about journalist and film reviewers calling this an “abortion romantic comedy”?
That’s a short-hand a lot of journalists have picked up and while it doesn’t quite hit the mark at least publications are taking the fear away by using that word more freely and I like that abortion is being spoken about.