Margaret Atwood’s “The Handmaid’s Tale,” published in 1985, is a novel depicting a dystopian world in which women are subjected to a military dictatorship that forbids them to read and forces them to reproduce. On PBS last week, Atwood suggested this plot has become reality in states like Tennessee and Texas. The reason? Pro-life legislation.
In an interview with Charlie Rose, Atwood was supposed to just plug her new book "The Stone Mattress," yet when the host asked why her older novel was still garnering attention, the conversation turned much more political:
ATWOOD: The Handmaid’s Tale is having a big moment on social media and elsewhere because of the various states in the United States who’ve enacted some quite strange legislation having to do with pregnant women.
ROSE: Like what?
ATWOOD: Like if you are pregnant and you are even suspected of possibly not wanting your baby you can be arrested and chained up to your hospital bed until you have the baby. Tennessee has just enacted legislation like that. Texas has got it. A number of them have it. And it’s all right-to-life stuff. But that’s why The Handmaid’s Tale. I know it’s frightening. I tell them to put that at the back but they won’t do it.
Yes, pro-lifers are violent misogynists who force women to have children they don’t want, according to Atwood.
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Rose was noticeably uncomfortable from Atwood’s controversial comments, yet that didn’t stop him from telling Atwood he ‘loves having her here.’
PBS acted as a microphone of sorts for abortion rights earlier this year, airing a documentary that was sympathetic to late-term abortionists as part of its “Point of View” series.
We’re still waiting for that pro-life documentary.
Atwood should consider writing a novel about the dangers women face when having abortions or how unborn babies are denied their basic human rights. I wonder, however, if PBS would still give her a call?
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