Carson Bonner, Campus Carrier editor-in-chief
Originally a novel written by Margaret Atwood that has since been adapted for television, “The Handmaid’s Tale” is a dystopian story following the lives of women after the second American Civil War. In the story, women have essentially been reduced to only serving a purpose in a reproductive sense. Birth control and abortion are illegal, unmarried or “sinful” women are forced to serve rich married couples struggling with fertility and those without children are shamed and shunned.
While as a concept this may seem extreme, we are rapidly approaching a world where “The Handmaid’s Tale” is realistic. In 2021, abortion was still federally legal. Women had the ability to not only go in person to have an abortive procedure, but they were also able to receive mifepristone — the drug used for medical abortions — in the mail. Birth control was readily available, not only for prevention of pregnancy, but for several other reasons including those unrelated to pregnancy. In 2022, Roe v. Wade, which recognized the individual’s right to abortion, was overturned. Since then, restrictions have been placed on abortion in over 40 states, with some states preventing abortion after six weeks and others imposing a full ban.
In “The Handmaid’s Tale,” abortion is punishable by death. South Carolina legislators have proposed a bill that would permit a life sentence or death penalty for abortions, as they would recognize a fertilized egg or embryo as a person. There are 14 states with abortion bans. Of these states and those with gestational limits, six have no health exceptions, 10 have no rape or incest exceptions and 13 have no fatal fetal anomaly exception. This means that the states do not feel as though being raped or having a high-risk pregnancy are justifiable reasons to allow women to make the choice to have an abortion.
Limitations also imposed on women include those placed on tubal ligation procedures. While federally, married women can have this procedure performed without spousal consent, states such as Georgia, North Carolina and Virginia require written spousal permission. To compare, men can receive a vasectomy without spousal agreement. Both procedures are reversible.
Some states are now questioning the validity of birth control, another point prominent in “The Handmaid’s Tale.” In May of 2022, Idaho state Rep. Brent Crane aimed to hold hearings on legislation banning emergency contraceptives and IUDs, which are a semipermanent inserted form of birth control. More recently, lawmakers in Missouri blocked a bill to widen access to birth control pills by claiming they induce abortions, which is entirely untrue. Another anti-abortion group in Louisiana blocked the state right to birth control by making the same false claims. In Idaho, a biblical activism group has been campaigning to ban access to IUDs.
The idea that some women may not want children continues to be increasingly demonized as well. Vice presidential candidate JD Vance was quoted as complaining in an interview with Fox News in 2021 that the country was run by Democrats, corporate oligarchs and “a bunch of childless cat ladies who are miserable at their own lives and the choices that they’ve made and so they want the rest of the country to be miserable as well. It’s just a basic fact – you look at Kamala Harris, Pete Buttigieg, [Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez] — the entire future of democrats is controlled by people without children. How does it make any sense that we’ve turned our country over to people who don’t really have a direct stake in it?”
When a country places less value on certain individuals, it becomes more acceptable to remove the rights of those individuals. Within two years of the overturning of Roe v. Wade, reproductive rights have gone back in time to the 1970s, without much pushback. While “The Handmaid’s Tale” may seem as though it’s far out of reach, it can be easy to ignore setbacks. It’s when we fall prey to blissful ignorance that we lose sight of the democracy we thought we had.