Reproductive Rights In The Handmaid's Tale

In the real world, leaders, governments and even certain countries have been trying to decrease population growth in developing countries with contraceptives and sterilization whereas in The Handmaid’s Tale they are trying to increase the population growth because of their infertility. In Gilead’s society, women are obligated to have children with men they do not care for and are forced to give them away at birth. Women are not only diminished to their fertility and ability to reproduce but they are also prohibited from thinking for themselves and using their bodies as they wish. They barely have any freedoms and their lives are limited to going to the market and the doctor. In both cases, women do not have power over their reproductive rights …show more content…
In the real world, we face many difficulties, yet we haven’t come to this extreme, at least not in my lifetime. This story serves as a warning to perhaps prevent the dangers of what could happen if our society denies women some of their fundamental rights, such as their reproductive rights. Refusing to give them these rights would take away their dignity and part of their identity because their bodies are only seen as political instruments. Things could get way out of control and without realizing it we could end up in a society where males have all the power and women are nothing but child-bearers like in The Handmaid’s Tale. In the fictional story, not only do men possess all the power with different categories (commanders, military men and spies/police also known as the eyes) but women are watched and controlled at all times. They are depersonalized and considered as lesser than their opposite gender – …show more content…
The following two historical events are cases of countries wanting to control their population growth and in order to do that they decided to sterilize millions of people. The first example I will talk about is India in 1975. According to a BBC News article, India was in a state of emergency at that time and they sterilized 8 million people. Now I don’t care what kind of emergency they were dealing with, even if it was the end of the World, there is no reason to take away people’s right to reproduce. The second example I chose to discuss is China and its one child policy. This started in 1983 and what was done was the most inhumane thing you could ever imagine. Not only did they sterilize 16 million women and 4 million men but 14 million babies were aborted. China’s situation was far worse than that of India. And not only did they abort children but they aborted them right before they were about to be born. "These were women in the late second and third trimester of pregnancy. There were several women just days away from giving birth. And in my hearing, a party official said: 'Do not think that you can simply wait until you go into labor and give birth, because we will not allow your baby to live. You will go home alone'." (quoted on BBC News). I cannot believe that people are capable of doing such