USA – Abortion curbs led to book: Atwood

Abortion curbs led to book: Atwood
Moves to limit women's access to abortion, particularly in the United States, led to The Testaments

By Reuters in London
Published 11.09.19

Canadian author Margaret Atwood said moves to limit women's access to abortion, particularly in the United States, led to the sequel to The Handmaid’s Tale which was released on Tuesday in a hotly-anticipated cultural event.

The Testaments sees Atwood pick up the story from her 1985 account of a totalitarian future in which fertile women are forced into sexual servitude to repopulate a world facing environmental disaster. She said she had not planned a sequel to the story, which was set in fictional Gilead in the US region of New England in the near future, but real life political events, including moves to limit women’s reproductive rights, led her to reconsider.

Continued: https://www.telegraphindia.com/world/abortion-curbs-led-to-book-atwood/cid/1704011

11.09.2019

Featured

News

anti-choice restrictions

sequel to Handmaid's Tale

Margaret Atwood Thinks Roe v. Wade Will Be Overturned⁠—and There Will Be the ‘Most Horrific Backlash

Margaret Atwood Thinks Roe v. Wade Will Be Overturned⁠—and There Will Be the 'Most Horrific Backlash'

By Chantal Da Silva
On 9/10/19

As states across America continue to usher in new laws imposing restrictions on abortion, Margaret Atwood's 1985 dystopian novel The Handmaid's Tale has become increasingly relevant in its depiction of a totalitarian regime that sees women's bodies as properties of the state.

And now, as Atwood releases The Testaments, her much-anticipated sequel to The Handmaid's Tale, the Canadian author has also offered a premonition for the future of abortion laws in the U.S.

Continued: https://www.newsweek.com/margaret-atwood-testaments-handmaids-tale-abortion-laws-u-s-roe-v-wade-1458483

10.09.2019

Featured

News

anti-choice restrictions

USA – From TV to Real Life: ‘Handmaid’s Tale’ Co-Producer Discusses Women’s Rights Issues

From TV to Real Life: ‘Handmaid’s Tale’ Co-Producer Discusses Women’s Rights Issues

By Bonnie Azoulay
07/02/19

When Wendy Straker Hauser started working as a co-producer on The Handmaid’s Tale, Donald Trump hadn’t yet won the presidency. She was just as shocked as viewers watching the show when they discovered how accurately Margaret Atwood’s 1985 dystopian novel mimicked the politics unfolding in real time. Until I spoke to Hauser, I assumed that some of the events portrayed on the TV series were altered to reflect what was happening in modern-day America. But before it streamed on Hulu, the show was produced and shot months before she or her crew could have a chance to change any scenes to mirror current events.

Continued: https://observer.com/2019/07/handmaids-tale-bold-type-wendy-straker-hauser-womens-rights-issues/

02.07.2019

How Margaret Atwood predicted America’s future in The Handmaid’s Tale

How Margaret Atwood predicted America’s future in The Handmaid’s Tale

Posted by Jean Hannah Edelstein
Published Jun 18, 2019

“If you return to your country of origin, would you be persecuted on the basis of you being a woman?”

On the bank of a dark river, a Canadian customs official speaks these words to a woman who is lying on the ground, drenched in freezing river water, clutching a baby. She has just completed a harrowing near-death journey across the border, and this is part of the script that the officer must recite in order for her to seek refuge in Canada. The woman nods, shivering and frantic. “Do you wish to claim asylum?” the guard asks.

Continued: https://www.stylist.co.uk/life/handmaids-tale-margaret-atwood-predicted-us-abortion-law-pro-life-heartbeat-bill/273387

From Alabama to Armagh, women are on the front line waging the ‘war on abortion’

From Alabama to Armagh, women are on the front line waging the ‘war on abortion’
Far from being driven just by men, many female voices are heard in the anti-choice lobby

Catherine Bennett
Sat 18 May 2019

Intensifying campaigns to criminalise all abortion in the US have been summarised, accurately, as a war on women, one that calls on women to, as the presidential contender Senator Kirsten Gillibrand has put it, “fight like hell”.

In terms of knowing the enemy, much of it, in the US, will certainly resemble the Alabama misogynists – the 25 white, male, no longer young Republicans who have just stripped half their state’s population of reproductive rights. Photographs have been generously distributed. But, as the men would probably be the first to admit, they couldn’t have ushered in a generation or more of unwanted children without assistance from at least two women combatants, Terri Collins and the state governor, Kay Ivey.

Continued: https://www.theguardian.com/commentisfree/2019/may/18/from-alabama-to-armagh-women-are-on-the-front-line-in-the-war-on-abortion

What Actually Happens When a Country Bans Abortion

What Actually Happens When a Country Bans Abortion
Romania under Ceausescu created a dystopian horror of overcrowded, filthy orphanages, and thousands died from back-alley abortions.

By Amy Mackinnon
May 16, 2019

As lawmakers in Alabama this week passed a bill that would outlaw abortion in the U.S. state entirely, protesters outside the statehouse wore blood-red robes, a nod to Margaret Atwood’s dystopian novel The Handmaid’s Tale, in which childbearing is entirely controlled by the state. Hours later, the book was trending on Twitter.

But opponents of the restrictive abortion laws currently being considered in the United States don’t need to look to fiction for admonitory examples of where these types of laws can lead. For decades, communist Romania was a real-life test case of what can happen when a country outlaws abortion entirely, and the results were devastating.

Continued: https://foreignpolicy.com/2019/05/16/what-actually-happens-when-a-country-bans-abortion-romania-alabama/

Alabama anti-abortion legislation part of wave of state bills ‘attacking’ Roe vs. Wade

Alabama anti-abortion legislation part of wave of state bills 'attacking' Roe vs. Wade
Anti-abortion voters were key to putting Donald Trump in the White House

Lyndsay Duncombe · CBC News
Posted: May 15, 2019

The encounter lasted about a minute. A red-haired young woman driving a grey car pulled up to the parking lot of the only abortion clinic in the state of Missouri — a Planned Parenthood office near downtown St. Louis.

Dressed in a bright orange vest, Maggie Tebeau smiled, waved and moved toward the car window.

Continued: https://www.cbc.ca/news/world/alabama-anti-abortion-legislation-part-of-wave-of-state-bills-attacking-roe-vs-wade-1.5136001

On Abortion in the Context of Malta: a Medical Doctor’s Perspective

On Abortion in the Context of Malta: a Medical Doctor’s Perspective

April 3, 2019
Gilbert Gravino
Illustrations by the author

It is extremely important to differentiate between being anti-abortion at an individual level and being anti-legalising-abortion (anti-choice), a distinction that is often overlooked. It is perfectly reasonable and respectable for individuals who would never have an abortion themselves to be pro-choice.

At the heart of every debate on abortion are its scientific, moral, social, psychological and medical aspects. They all play a crucial role in formulating an opinion and taking a stance on the issue.

Continued: https://www.islesoftheleft.org/on-abortion-in-the-context-of-malta-a-medical-doctors-perspective/

USA – Reproductive Rights at Risk With or Without Roe

Reproductive Rights at Risk With or Without Roe
In much of the country, access to abortion has already been blocked by state governments, especially for women in poverty. And if Roe goes, access will be scarcer still.

Kalena Thomhave
January 11, 2019

Recent discussions of abortion rights have been understandably chock-full of apocalyptic imagery and language. Some protesters at the U.S. Capitol in the Trump era have dressed as handmaids à la The Handmaid’s Tale, Margaret Atwood’s story of an ultra-conservative totalitarian government that compels women to have the children of the wealthy and powerful. After Brett Kavanaugh was confirmed to the Supreme Court, many — on both the left and right — assumed that Roe v. Wade was soon to fall. “Roe v. Wade is doomed,”CNN’s Jeffrey Toobin pronounced last June to much media fanfare.

Continued: https://prospect.org/article/reproductive-rights-risk-or-without-roe-0

Italy’s politics gives new life to anti-abortion campaign

Italy’s politics gives new life to anti-abortion campaign
Italian cities and government ministers are taking aim at a 40-year-old law on reproductive rights.

By Giada Zampano
11/18/18

ROME — It is 40 years since Italy passed a law that legalized abortion, but activists fear a woman’s right to choose is again under attack — this time from the country’s politicians.

Thousands of women have taken to the streets in recent weeks to protest against a rise in anti-abortion initiatives in Italian cities — but the same measures enjoy widespread backing among supporters of the country’s most powerful party, the far-right League, as well as the Catholic Church.

Continued: https://www.politico.eu/article/italy-abortion-divide-politics-gives-new-life-to-anti-abortion-campaign/