As anti-abortion state legislators and activists take advantage of COVID-19 to severely restrict abortion access, Margaret Atwood’s classic dystopian novel 'The Handmaid’s Tale' is beginning to feel frighteningly prescient.
We live in a country governed by men who do not respect the sovereignty of women’s bodies—our President and a Supreme Court justice have been credibly accused of sexual assault—or of the body politic. I have lived under states of emergency before, and I do not doubt that Donald Trump, Mike Pence and William Barr would be delighted to declare one here, thus accruing to themselves powers like the ones the apartheid regime in South Africa enjoyed.
Regimes that fancy themselves righteous or simply crave authority repeatedly show themselves willing to undo civil society to advance their own interests. South Africa on its handling of the virus, while admitting, that “[o]f course, there have been mistakes, and worse.
If it sounds like a leap to get from viral containment policies to racist practices, it might be worth pointing out that evidence rapidly accrues to show theThe Handmaid’s TaleBlack people appear to be more likely to contract or succumb to COVID-19. Similarly, “It ends with a commentary from a snarky academic from a fictional future who points out that Gilead’s “racist policies … were firmly rooted in the pre-Gilead period.
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