The dystopian premise of The Handmaid’s Tale, in which women are denied the right to bear children, first came to the mind of Canadian novelist Margaret Atwood in the 1980s. Almost 50 years later, in an opinion piece for The Atlantic, she drew parallels between her Christian, White patriarchal land of Gilead and the United States, which had just overturned the landmark Roe v. Wade verdict.
Social Media Landscape is Filled With References
The Handmaid’s Tale, #BansOffMyBody, and #MyBodyMyChoice all were trending topics on Twitter immediately following the judgement. Currently, the social media landscape is filled with references to “contemporary Handmaid’s Tale.” A proposed opinion by Justice Samuel Alito to overturn Roe v. Wade, the 1973 decision that guaranteed women’s access to safe abortion, was leaked in May 2022.
The conservative majority of the Supreme Court of the United States (SCOTUS), courtesy to appointees made by Donald Trump, declared on June 24 that abortions are illegal up until foetal viability, or around 24 weeks into a pregnancy. The legality of abortion is currently being decided at the state level, with at least six US states having already implemented a ban and another 26 preparing to do so.
Both men and women in the United States were forced to reproduce during the time of chattel slavery. According to Dorothy Roberts’s brilliant 1997 book Killing the Black Body, “the childbearing of slave women replenished the enslaved work force.” Slave owners might claim prenatal ownership of the children born to their enslaved mothers.
As a result, “whites’ subjugation of African Americans in the Americas relied heavily on their ability to restrict the reproduction of African Americans.” Forced reproduction became even more important to slave owners after the 1808 ban on importing additional enslaved people into the United States.
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Similar atrocities were imposed on the people of Puerto Rico, in part because of pressure and funding from the United States. A nurse working at an ICE detention centre in 2020 made allegations that a doctor there had done hysterectomies on female inmates without their knowledge, earning the doctor the nickname “the uterus collector.”
While the Department of Homeland Security found no evidence to corroborate the hysterectomy claims, they did determine that the facility’s “medical policies and procedures” were “inadequate.” Since then, over forty female migrants have sued the doctor, who has rejected the charges. Thanks for reading our article The Handmaids Tale Social Media Users Compare Leaked Roe V.
