Over the past two weeks, social media called out to people throughout the US (and the world)  – Protect your reproductive rights!

In response to the leaked Supreme Court opinion regarding the probability that the court will overturn Roe v Wade, the law allowing abortion, Saturday was declared a “national day of action” by Planned Parenthood and Women’s March. 

Since the leak hit the news and social media, activists supporting abortion have been demonstrating in protest at the US Supreme Court, at the justices’ homes, and all over the country.

For years, many activists have been fighting for the right of women to make their own decisions about pregnancy. Many have shown up at demonstrations wearing red cloaks and white bonnets made famous by The Handmaid’s Tale, Margaret Atwood’s dystopian novel written in 1985, and a popular Hulu network series.

The outfit worn by the handmaids in the book have been seen in demonstrations all over the world, and has become a feminist symbol of protest against the oppression of women.

On Sunday, in response to social media calls from pro-abortion groups to protest at Catholic churches over the Mother’s Day weekend, protestors dressed in the red cloaks entered the Cathedral of Our Lady of the Angels in Los Angeles during mass.

“Stuff your rosaries and your weaponized prayer. We will remain outraged after this weekend, so keep praying. We’ll be burning the Eucharist to show our disgust for the abuse Catholic Churches have condoned for centuries,” tweeted the organization.

All across the US, women have been donning the outfit at demonstrations in front of state capitols, protesting the legislatures’ actions, made mostly by male elected officials.

In Missouri, a reproductive rights group helped to organize one of the Handmaid’s Tale themed demonstrations. M’Evie Mead, head of policy and organizing for Planned Parenthood Advocates, called out to women to protest when the Missouri state legislature was trying to prevent women on Medicaid from receiving services from Planned Parenthood clinics. 

“The Handmaid’s Tale was being really lived out in Missouri, with those legislatures trying to take the agency of those Medicaid patients away,” Mead said.

In Argentina, where protests against the country’s congress were prevalent, The Handmaid’s Tale author, Margaret Atwood, wrote a letter that was read at the demonstrations, by women clad in the garb of the book. 

“Nobody likes abortion, even when safe and legal,” she wrote. “It’s not what any woman would choose for a happy time on Saturday night. But nobody likes women bleeding to death on the bathroom floor from illegal abortions, either. What to do?”

For many women, the answer was to show their solidarity and rage by wearing Atwood’s red cloaks. 

Keishia Taylor, is an example of a woman who chose to wear the handmaid’s uniform in demonstrations in Northern Ireland to overturn its abortion law. She explained her motivation in her statement, “The image used in The Handmaid’s Tale cuts right to heart of the toxic relationship between church and state… When we started using these costumes … we thought, we can’t sit back. So we put out a call to people who could help make the costumes, and there was a huge response.”

Why do feminists identify so strongly with The Handmaid’s Tale?  Is it because it is a book and a television series about white women in slavery?

Are women relating to the connections between the book’s horrific depictions of women in the future in Gilead, a fictional town in New England, and the trend in US politics? Legislatures all over the country are making abortion illegal, abortion clinics are closing, and it seems likely the Supreme Court will overturn Roe v Wade. Women see these events  as an omen and a clear call to action. The red cloaks worn by the subjugated women in The Handmaid’s Tale has become a symbol of women’s outrage.

In the book, which takes place in the future, most women have become infertile due to an environmental disaster. The few remaining women who are still able to become pregnant are organized and forced to become “handmaids,” women who are owned by elite men and raped for the sole purpose of producing offspring. These women have lost all their reproductive rights, essentially reduced to slavery.

Far fetched? The fight for reproductive rights has become the second biggest feminist issue for women. The first big fight was voting rights for women (particularly white women). Women have been advocating for the right to access to safe and legal abortion for years. In The Handmaid’s Tale, women have completely lost their right to choose. 

In the “real world,” have we come to the extreme depicted in Atwood’s book? Does the story give a warning to present day society about the danger of what might happen if legislatures and courts decide what women can do with their bodies? Could we envision a society where elite, ruling class men have all the power and women have no rights?

Video about LA demonstration at the church: