This Handmaid's Tale-inspired protest is scarily real

From Digital Spy

If you've read or watched the recent season of The Handmaid's Tale, you'll know what a terrifying glimpse it is into a fictional future.

But American non-profit organisation for the protection of reproductive healthcare, Planned Parenthood, has recently shown how decisions being made by the current US government could actually be seen as worrying steps in the right direction for a Handmaid's Tale-esque reality to become the country's future.

The Handmaid's Tale is a book written by Margaret Atwood, set in a dystopian future where women's liberation and drive to succeed in their careers has caused a dramatic drop in birth rates.

Related: Everything you need to know about The Handmaid's Tale season 2

As a result, women are now seen as nothing more than a vessel from which to procreate, and are treated almost as slaves in captivity who are emotionlessly impregnated in a monthly 'ceremony' carried out by wealthy and influential men.

It's a horrible insight into an extreme version of what could happen if women's rights are continually reduced.

And Planned Parenthood has carried out a bold but effective demonstration in Washington this week as a reflection of its concerns that, if a new health bill is passed by the US government which will limit women's rights to abortion even further than they already are, the country could be heading for a similarly bleak future.

According to Business Insider, 36 Planned Parenthood volunteers dressed in long red capes and white bonnets – just as the Handmaids do – and stood outside Washington DC's Capitol building to make a stand against the Senate's proposed healthcare bill.

The GOP bill is designed to replace President Obama's Affordable Care Act (ACA), but the concern surrounding the newly proposed legislation is that, according to the Congressional Budget Office, it would leave an estimated 22 million more Americans without health insurance in the next nine years. Women's reproductive rights are just one area of many that would suffer if the bill is passed.

As it stands, the bill has been delayed as a result of resistance against it, hence groups like Planned Parenthood are doing what they can to mount even further pressure on the government in a bid to get them to scrap it.

One volunteer, Elena Lipsiea, explained the group's intention to The Hill. "Dressing up as a handmaid gives a clear message to our administration and the Senate about how seriously we take their decisions and how radically it can affect our lives," she said.

And the group aren't the only ones to have protested in reference to The Handmaid's Tale in recent weeks; similar demonstrations have taken place in Texas and Ohio in objection to the GOP bill.

"It would be the worst bill for women in generations and decimate women's healthcare," Planned Parenthood communications director Fern Whyland told The Hill, adding: "It's a healthcare bill with no healthcare."

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