Teen television has evolved in striking ways from the days of Growing Pains to the current era of Riverdale. But one thing that hasn’t changed is the genre’s general skittishness around abortion, a third-rail topic that’s often addressed only once on most teen-centric shows, if at all. Unless, of course, that show has the word Degrassi in its title. The enduring Canadian TV franchise has tackled abortion four times over the course of its nearly four-decade existence, and — amazingly enough — never in the same way twice. “Each of those stories was the same topic, but very much influenced by the social and political backdrop of the day,” points out Linda Schuyler, who co-created the very first Degrassi series, The Kids of Degrassi Street, in 1979 and has overseen every iteration made since, from Degrassi Junior High to Degrassi: Next Class, which is currently streaming on Netflix.

The first Degrassi student to choose to end her pregnancy was Erica Farrell (Angela Deiseach), who walked through a crowd of anti-abortion protesters into a Toronto clinic in the two-part series premiere of Degrassi High in 1989. Three years later, Tessa Campanelli (Kirsten Bourne) opted not to carry her baby with fan favorite Joey Jeremiah (Pat Mastroianni) to term in the post-graduation telefilm School’s Out. Jumping ahead to 2004, a Next Generation Degrassi student, Manny Santos (Cassie Steele), chose to have an abortion with the full support of her mother in a pair of episodes that famously didn’t air on U.S. television until 2006. And just last year, the Degrassi: Next Class cameras followed Lola Pacini (Amanda Arcuri) into a clinic where a doctor gently explained the procedure to her in terms that teens in the show — and, more important, at home — could understand.

“I never could have done a scene where Lola’s got her feet on the stirrups and the doctor is talking to her in the ’80s,” Schuyler marvels now. “We just could not have done that! It was a time of political unrest, so we had our girls have to fight through demonstrators outside abortion clinics. The fact that we got away with what we did back then is quite astounding.” It was astounding to the kids watching at home as well. I was 11 years old and living in Toronto — only a few neighborhoods over from the real Degrassi Street, in fact — when I watched Erica enter her local clinic tightly clutching the hand of her twin sister, Heather, while a crowd of furious adults screamed at them. The final freeze-frame, with the sisters going through the clinic door while a protester holds a small plastic baby aloft in the foreground, is an image that has been seared into my brain ever since.

Erica’s bravery in the face of that fury resonated with me, and I came away from the episode fully understanding why she made her choice — the same way I understood why Erica’s friend Spike made the choice to have her baby in the previous series, Degrassi Junior High. Among kids my age, both of those Degrassi shows (as well as the tie-in novels that I voraciously read as extracurricular activities) could be relied upon to impart information about sex and its consequences in ways that were more tantalizing, and less awkward, than public school sex-ed class or the dreaded “talk” at home.

Schuyler is well aware of the impact Degrassi had on us ’80s and ’90s teens. “You have to remember there was no internet back then, so we had a mandate to not only bring up these issues, but also provide a lot of information because there were precious [few] other places that people could go. In fact, in the early days, Degrassi Junior High and Degrassi High were sold extensively to school boards and used as part of the health and sex-ed curriculum,” she says. “I think schools have gotten a lot better about it today, because I’ve heard that people sometimes will reference Degrassi still in the classrooms, but it doesn’t get brought in as part of the curriculum.” To this day, she’s accustomed to people (like me) telling her how much Degrassi played a part in their education as teenagers. “When I went to pitch Degrassi: Next Class to Netflix, one of the executives said to me, ‘I want you to know that I’m Canadian and got all my sex ed from Degrassi Junior High and Degrassi High,” she recalls, chuckling.