Local Opinion: Post-Roe, we're halfway to a Handmaid's Tale

The Fourth of July is generally a lighthearted affair, and, post-pandemic, a lot of us were even more determined than usual to have fun. But post-Roe, that determination had to overcome the irony of celebrating American democracy so soon after the galling triumph of the anti-democratic minority ruling overturning the constitutional right of abortion.

The Supreme Court’s action propels our country well down the trajectory to Gilead, the fundamentalist, patriarchal, despotic country depicted in the popular TV series “The Handmaid’s Tale.”

For those who haven’t seen the series, in Gilead — what’s become of at least part of the U.S. in an unspecified future — enslaved women called handmaids are assigned to affluent households mainly to produce children by means of a ritual in which they are ceremonially raped by the head of family, while the infertile wife looks on.

The Supreme Court decision goes a long way toward forced motherhood and a vision of women as primarily vessels for childbearing.

In Justice Thomas’ comment it’s clear that the court’s ambition may well take the form of outlawing not only medicinal forms of abortion such as the morning-after pill, but the long-established, prudent practice of contraception.

In the TV series, Canada offers sanctuary from Gilead and a certain amount of the action takes place on the “underground railway” trying to smuggle women out of the oppressive society to the south.

Post-Roe we are already in that reality, some states offering sanctuary to victims of other states with trigger laws, passing laws meant to keep the women and providers safe.

When “The Handmaid’s Tale” series appeared, it seemed sci-fi, a cautionary tale but distant from our own reality. For one thing, Gilead is a patriarchal dictatorship, not a democracy. The majority of Americans were pro-choice; democracy would save us. It was hard to imagine how we could end up like Gilead.

It doesn’t take so much imagination now. Suddenly, a few days past the ruling, we’re more Gilead than not.

Of course, that may not be a tragedy to all of us. I’m not aware of any polls on this but I wonder how many of those in the anti-choice camp who have seen the TV series see Gilead not as a dystopic cautionary tale it is intended as, but rather as a model of what our country should look like.

Legal rape, that central feature of Gilead society, presumably appeals to thousands of Incels, (Involuntary Celibates) who believe women owe them the sex they are not getting the usual way.

Still, we’re a democracy, right? Polls have consistently shown us roughly two-to-one in favor of Roe. We, the two-thirds majority ignored by the Supreme Court, can just go to the polls in November and in 2024 and overturn the overturning by voting in officials who will reverse the state-level bans.

Should be a slam dunk, despite GOP efforts to reduce access to the vote and get control of the counting. Shouldn’t it? (And it’s a twofer, many pro-choice politicians also are in favor of real control over gun access.)

But then, we need to ask, how did Trump, whose appointees are responsible for the overturn of Roe — who indeed was clear in campaigning in 2016 that he would appoint justices for that very reason — get elected in the first place?

You can argue the nuances of the abortion issue — when exactly does life begin, life of the mother vs. life of the fetus, etc. But what there should be no argument about is whether one-third of the citizenry should in a democracy be empowered to ignore the wishes of two-thirds.

The harm done by the recent Supreme Court decision is as much to institutional democracy as to women.

November ’22 and ’24 will be crucial tests of whether democracy will survive as something we can celebrate on future Fourths.