Women dressed in long red robes and white bonnets appeared in the Texas Senate on Monday, in protest of two abortion-related bills under consideration.
The outfits are from The Handmaid's Tale, Margaret Atwood's 1985 feminist novel that is being adapted into a series for Hulu, premiering April 26. The novel takes place in a near-future dystopia where women have been stripped of all their rights. "Handmaids," which the women in Texas were dressed as, are designated breeders forced to bear children.
According to The Huffington Post, the women were protesting Senate Bills 415 and 25, the first of which bans a common second-trimester abortion procedure known as D&E, or dilation and evacuation, the second would prevent parents from suing doctors if their baby is born with a birth defect. Opponents have argued that these bills would prevent one of the most common and safest procedures used in abortion and would encourage doctors to withhold information about a fetus' potential disability.
The women were photographed in the Senate building and many posted about it on social media.
Women dressed as handmaids are protesting anti-abortion bills at the Capitol. #FightBackTX #txlege pic.twitter.com/w5EQfBqNtG
— PPTV (@PPTXVotes) March 20, 2017
A Handmaid's Tale comes to life in the Senate Gallery. #FightBackTX pic.twitter.com/aLAOLRKH2j
— Whole Woman's Health (@WholeWomans) March 20, 2017
2 DPS officers, Senate door guy & sergeant at arms have positioned themselves around a group of #handmaidstale activists in Senate #txlege pic.twitter.com/UC54ZlULQd
— Alexa Garcia-Ditta (@agarciaditta) March 20, 2017
The Handmaid's Tale has been back in the news recently, in part due to the new adaptation, which stars Elisabeth Moss (Mad Men), Samira Wiley (Orange is the New Black) and Alexis Bledel (Gilmore Girls). It recently surged on USA TODAY's Best-Selling Books list, along with other classic dystopian literature including 1984 by George Orwell, Brave New World by Aldous Huxley, and It Can't Happen Here by Sinclair Lewis.
