In this piece, writer Kellee Terrell explores why Coco's abortion storyline on Netflix's Dear White People is vital for representation.

During the fourth episode of Dear White People’s second season, Colandrea "Coco" Conner (Antoinette Robertson) finds herself at a crossroads. She’s young, black, single, and pregnant. And while the extremely ambitious Winchester University student is hellbent on breaking her family’s vicious cycle of poverty and having too many “badass kids,” she considers a life with the child.

"Part of me thinks maybe I should — my mom did,“ she tells her roommate Kelsey. "But then I’ll be a 20-year-old college dropout. What kind of life could I give to a child?"

In an episode shorter than half-an-hour, show creator Justin Simien, writer Njeri Brown, and director Kimberly Pierce crafted a remarkably powerful and nuanced abortion storyline. It puts a young black woman at the center of the challenging decision, as Coco weighs putting her dreams and ambitions against her maternal instinct.

As Coco silently sits in the clinic waiting room, she suddenly tells Kelsey, “F*ck it, I want to leave.” But that decision comes with a hefty price. Coco envisions a future in which she drops out of college to birth a beautiful daughter, Penelope, who 18 years later ends up at Winchester, living out the dreams her mom left behind to have her.

But it’s not real. As the receptionist calls Coco’s name, she snaps out of this little fantasy world. It’s clear that she’s finally made her decision: She’s not having a baby, at least not anytime soon.

The episode is being hailed as one of the season’s best and called the abortion storyline "we’ve all been waiting for." And for black women, Coco’s journey is especially important. Despite a handful of abortion narratives over recent years on shows such as Scandal, Being Mary Jane, and Love & Hip Hop, we aren't oftne represented in these types of stories. According to 2015 study conducted by researchers at the University of California, San Francisco, 87% of abortion storylines on U.S. television between 2005 and 2014 were about white women and were more likely to be middle class and in their 30s. Meanwhile, black women accounted for a measly 5%. Hispanic? Zero.

The real world tells a different story. According to the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, while abortions have hit an all-time low, black women still have some of the highest rates in the United States. A recent report found that there were 26.6 abortions per 1,000 black women aged 15–44 years, compared to 7.5 abortions per 1,000 white women.