The Dystopian Future of "The Handmaid's Tale" Is Becoming More Real Every Day

I read Margaret Atwood's book, "The Handmaid's Tale" years ago but, given our current politics, haven't been able to bring myself to watch the Hulu series. Things are depressing enough without adding that to the mix. Lately I've been re-thinking that decision because there are a lot of things pointing to the possibility that the dystopian future Atwood pointed to is becoming more real every day. 

It's not just that we could be about two months away from the Supreme Court gutting or overruling Roe v Wade. We're seeing one red state after another signal that outcome by passing increasingly harsh restrictions on women's reproductive freedom, with Oklahoma outright banning abortion - even in cases of rape and incest.

In addition, right wingers are beginning to openly state that their intent is to go further. Of course, that started a few years ago with the Hobby Lobby case and the application of "religious freedom" to pharmacists who refused to fill prescriptions for birth control. 

But during the confirmation hearings for Justice Ketanji Brown Jackson, Senator Marsha Blackburn signaled the next step when she referred to the decision in Griswold v. Connecticut - which legalized the right to birth control for married couples - as "constitutionally unsound." In other words, once they've taken away access to abortion, the goal is to go after birth control.

What is even more disturbing is that all of that is happening against the backdrop of a push to get women to have more babies and vilify those who chose to remain childless. Former Republican House Speaker Paul Ryan was one of the first Republicans to make the case back in 2017. 

Paul Ryan lays out new Soylent Green agenda. Says women need to have more babies if we want to avoid big Social Security and Medicare cuts. pic.twitter.com/LMdY2msAfN

— Josh Marshall (@joshtpm) December 14, 2017

In 2020, conservative columnist Ross Douthat wrote an extensive piece titled, "The Case for One More Child: Why Large Families Will Save Humanity." After the release of 2020 census data, the editorial board of the Washington Post joined the chorus.

The [census] bureau found in late December that the nation’s population grew only 0.1 percent over the year ending on July 1, 2021, the slowest rate since its founding...

National policy should promote vigorous population expansion. A more welcoming immigration policy...is an obvious start. The federal government should also encourage more childbirth by making it easier to raise children in the United States.

While I strongly support family friendly policies, the idea that the federal government would take it upon itself to encourage more childbirth (ie, that women should have more babies) is a frightening step in the direction of the dystopian future Atwood warned us about.

The Trump-endorsed candidate in the Ohio senate race, J.D. Vance, has also taken it upon himself to castigate those who chose not to have children. 

Vance chastised four prominent Democrat leaders – Vice-President Kamala Harris, transportation secretary Pete Buttigieg, Senator Cory Booker and Congresswoman Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez – for not reproducing, suggesting that not having biological kids made them bad leaders.

Being childfree, per Vance, means you don’t have a “physical commitment to the future of [the US]” thus shouldn’t have as much say in the direction of the country as parents.

Of course, Tucker Carlson immediately had Vance on his show to expound on these lies. Here's what he had to say:

We're effectively run in this country, via the Democrats and our corporate oligarchs, by a bunch of childless cat ladies, who are miserable at their own lives and the choices they've made, and so they want to make the rest of the country miserable too...How does it make any sense that we've turned our country over to people who don't really have a stake in it? 

All of his feeds into the right wing's embrace of replacement theory, which is "predicated on the notion that white women are not having enough children and that falling birthrates will lead to white people around the world being replaced by nonwhite people."

As far-right groups have grown across the world, many of their members have insisted that the most pressing concern is falling birthrates. That concern, which they see as an existential threat, has led to arguments about how women are working instead of raising families. The groups blame feminism, giving rise to questions that were unheard-of a decade ago — like, whether women should have the right to work and vote at all.

I am typically the last one to engage in alarmism. But I've had to recalibrate over the last few years as we've seen a steady stream of crazy ideas go from the extremist fringe on the right to becoming mainstays in the Republican Party - all in the blink of an eye (stolen elections, pedophiles, etc.). Given that reality, it would behoove us all to recognize that what Atwood envisioned in the "The Handmaid's Tale" isn't as far-fetched as we once might have assumed.