Agents of Reproduction: The Handmaid’s Tale and What it Means to be a Fertile Woman in Trump’s America
An essay on Trump, reproductive rights, and Hulu’s latest TV hit.
The year 1985 saw the release of Margaret Atwood’s dystopian novel, The Handmaid’s Tale, in which women of a futuristic United States are rounded up based on their fertility and forced to bear the children of their sovereigns. Exploring feminist thought of that time, Atwood’s world posed the idea of women as property, agents of reproduction, and objects incapable of reproductive autonomy. These women, now belonging to the nation of Gilead, were forced into pregnancies long after abortion and contraceptives were made illegal. Though somewhat an extreme account of the future, there remains harrowing similarities between Atwood’s world and our own. What’s more, the horror lies not in her telling of the character’s lives and experiences, but in the greater narrative which illustrates the power and control sovereigns hold over reproductive health and policy- an issue still very much relevant thirty years later. Though our ‘sovereigns’ may not be radical religious nuts (yet) but rather lawmakers, there’s no denying that with current trends in the Trump Administration’s approach to reproductive health, the fictional world of Gilead doesn’t seem too far off.
So for starters, what exactly is considered a fertile woman? The definition goes a bit further than a woman who is sexually active and capable of conceiving a child. If taken into account that US youth become sexually active from age 17 and you assume this lasts until the female body is no longer capable of reproducing at roughly the age of 51, around the time menopause sets in, you have about 35 years of activity and thereby 35 years of fertility with the possibility of becoming pregnant. In addition, there are two key points I want to stress when defining the fertile woman. First, this is a woman who is a conscious and active participant in her ability to conceive and give birth. It is her right to choose and hers only. Which leads me to my second point: the fertile woman is one who seeks control of her reproductive abilities, namely through contraceptives and methods of family planning, such as abortion. And yes, abortion is a form of family planning. If any of these terms are breached, the woman is no longer a fertile woman but rather an agent of reproduction, a body others would seek to carry out reproductive functions with little to no regard for the life of the woman. While in a perfect world women would have this freedom without argument, ours unfortunately resembles Atwood’s in that women don’t actually get to make these decisions. Instead, the choice to conceive, prevent, produce, and protect are all managed by our ‘sovereigns’, namely policymakers. This is Trump’s America.
The Trump Administration does not support the role of a fertile women but rather that as an agent of reproduction. Disparities between policy and practice put at risk both women and fundamental human rights. I begin with answering the question of what it means to be a fertile women in this America, under Trump.
First, reproductive health care whether preventative or not is sketchy at best. At the root, preventative options such as birth control are restricted by a variety of reasons such as, but not limited to, insurance, access, income, and age. And with recent efforts by the Trump Administration to cut coverage of many methods of contraceptives, women face an uphill battle in receiving the care they need, not to mention the lack of support in preventing unwanted pregnancies. The message then is clear: the fertile woman cannot expect the coverage she needs, nor can she be expected to maintain control over her own reproductive health.
Though not unique to The Handmaid’s Tale, the idea of men as having control over the bodies of women is terrifyingly common and evident in the world of fertile women. Gilead’s sovereigns chose to call their monthly subjection of the Handmaids a ‘ceremony’. We call it women’s healthcare and we see it everyday. Increasingly, or at least as far as I am aware, there has been a growing discussion on the role a father/male partner/abuser has in terms of a woman’s body, particularly in the regards to a fetus. Reminiscent of the Oklahoma House Bill 1441, which follows similar guidelines, House Bill 1566, proposed by Arkansas lawmakers is but an eerie example of how men believe themselves to hold power over what happens to a woman’s body. A brief summary of the bill illustrates is invasive policy, which would ask a woman to seek the approval of a male in regards to the termination of a pregnancy, regardless of whether or not the fetus was conceived as an act of rape. This furthers the idea that some males, and more importantly those in charge of protecting the rights of the fertile woman, see themselves as having control over her body and that she is nothing more than a host for a baby. This only goes to show that the ability to produce a child surpasses the importance of having rights as a human being.
Though fiction, Margaret Atwood’s accounts of female subjection to man’s policy and restrictions on reproductive rights and practice are all too real. In a world where we can allow a man who disregards the needs of half the population to become the ultimate ‘sovereign’, the question of the fate of our future is all too valid. Do we as a society have the capacity, under current rule and policy, to fall into the extremes of Gilead? For our sake, let’s hope not.
