Warning: This article discusses violence and abuse against women and contains spoilers for The Handmaid’s Tale.
The Handmaid’s Tale has concluded with its sixth and final season. Based on Margaret Atwood’s book of the same name, and its sequel The Testaments, it is a future dystopian exploration of one nation’s response to a fertility crisis.
An unexplained phenomenon has resulted in women, but mostly men, being sterile. The birth rate has dropped dramatically around the world and many babies are dying in utero or at birth. A healthy baby is now exceptionally rare.
In light of this, a faction within the American government begins to change laws driven by an exceptionally fundamental Christian narrative. The infertility of women (only females are blamed for the situation) is seen as God’s punishment on the nation for sinful sexual practices, homosexuality or “gender traitors”, and adultery. It is exacerbated by environmental degradation. A return to “God-ordained” traditional values is required.
What this looks like in reality is horrifying. Women identified as fertile firstly have their children stolen from them and then they are sent to the Red Centre to become Handmaids. They are essentially tortured and brainwashed into becoming incubators. It is framed theologically in terms of Jacob and Rachel. Rachel, unable to conceive, offers Jacob her servant Bilhah. She gives birth to two of Jacob’s twelve children, but the children belong to Rachel who names them Dan and Naphtali (Genesis 30). Practically, it results in Handmaids being assigned to wealthy leader’s homes, their menstrual cycle closely monitored by “Martha’s” (the infertile female domestic slaves) and the wife. They endure forced impregnation by the husband while being held in place by the wife three nights in a row at ovulation, which is called the “Ceremony”. The indignity of being essentially raped (there is no consent by the Handmaid) every single month is gut wrenching. Yet, it is couched in terms of being a privilege, that they are fulfilling their “biological destinies” in safety, and enjoying the protection of the husband.
A later development is identifying fertile girls. They attend “wife school” and are married off to lower rank commanders soon after they go through puberty. This means that child marriage slowly becomes commonplace and older men have teenage wives who have been trained to please them.
One of the horrific aspects of both these situations is that it is often the male who is infertile, meaning that the Handmaid or the child wife cannot get pregnant. Rich wives force other male members of the household to impregnate the Handmaids, while the husbands of child brides hand their wives around to other men. Both are further examples of the abuse and exploitation of women and girls under Gilead’s so-called “God-given” system.
Margaret Atwood, when writing the original book, which was published in 1985, gave herself a rule. Nothing could go into the book that didn’t have an historical or current precedent. Examples included Communist Romanian dictator Nicolae Ceausescu’s banning abortion and contraception, and the theft of blond haired, blue eyed Polish children in Nazi Germany under Hitler to assist in the creation of the perfect Aryan race. She was writing speculative fiction, so there had to be a real potential for this to happen. Atwood sees in the United States a pendulum between fundamentalist theocracy and egalitarian democracy. She cites the religious freedoms gained by the Puritans in coming to America resulted in them persecuting the Quakers, a swing to vast liberal and gender gains in the 1960’s and 1970’s, and then a reversal starting in the 1980’s with pushbacks against these to current times where individual states are rolling back woman’s rights. Roe vs Wade was overturned in 2022.
It is not like The Handmaid’s Tale is some far-fetched idea. Versions of it have already happened in Afghanistan and Iran. Fundamentalist Islam has managed to turn future focused and progressive Muslim nations in the 1960’s and 1970’s to places where girls cannot attend secondary school, there are punishments for clothing violations, and the erasure of women from public life.
We are beginning to see the same in countries favouring pronatalism. Russia paying teenage girls to see their pregnancies through. America arresting and imprisoning women for suffering a miscarriage. Stalin-esque rewards and medals for women having 10 or more children. The “right kind” of women being encouraged to have babies.
The reality is that these programmes are not working, and the birth rate is continuing to drop around the world.
The United Nations recently released its 2025 Population Report on this issue entitled The Real Fertility Crisis. It offers insights into the declining birth rate and offers far more nuanced understanding and better solutions than Gilead.
Rebecca Zerzan, the Editor of the report, was interviewed for ABC Radio National. In the interview, she explains that the findings of the report were that women and couples around the world were largely not having the number of children that they wanted.
If they had too many, which they could not afford or were ill-equipped to care for, it was due to things like:
- Laws surrounding women’s bodily autonomy and reproductive rights were non-existent, hostile to women, or being removed.
- Lack of education about family planning.
- Lack of access to contraception.
- Cultural shame.
- The inability to say no to sex due to cultural and/or religious traditions or expectations.
- Lack of access to abortion for unwanted, unplanned, or rape pregnancies.
If they had less children than they desired, it was due to:
- The inability to find a suitable partner and parent figure.
- The rising costs of raising a child, including feeding, clothing, housing, and educating them.
- The massive loss of income that women and consequently families endure when they have to take time to birth and care for children.
- The burden of care that falls predominantly on women to provide for children is viewed as detrimental.
- The exorbitant costs of childcare that can consume much or most of a second income.
- Major concerns for the child’s future in a world suffering from climate change and the lack of political decisions to combat this.
- Concerns for the child’s future where financial and housing security is more and more tenuous and larger numbers of people are slipping into poverty or the “rental class”.
- Concerns over the overpopulation of the planet and the overuse of resources.
Zerzan explains that the current political decisions that are being seen throughout the world are not conducive to changing the patterns. Baby bonuses, punitive action, and reward systems are poor incentives when the physical, financial, social, and emotional toll of raising children is so high. She says the answers can be found only when the actual issues that women and couples are raising are actually being listened to and addressed effectively. This includes increasing sex and family education, ensuring that women’s rights are protected and enforced, paying women fairly and adequately for their work, protecting their employment, valuing the roles of both parents in society, and ensuring secure, affordable housing.
Gilead’s solution is no better either. Coopting Scripture for political power and financial gain results in the abuse of women and children, and the degradation of all humanity.
No political system, no national government, no human society, can ever be completely just and fair. We don’t know what that perfect state might look like as there is no example of it in human history.
Jesus offered something quite unique. He told people that the Kingdom of God was here (e.g. Mark 1:14-15, Luke 6: 20, Luke 17:20-21). What God offered was radically different to the first century Jewish nation under Roman occupation. It is different to Australia’s liberal democracy that is shaped by patriarchy. God’s Kingdom offers true equality for all its citizens, rich or poor, male or female, child or adult. Nothing can prevent one from belonging and sharing in the Kingdom blessings, other than refusal to. While the Kingdom of God is not seen in its fullness yet, it offers a way of living in the world that honours and respects all.
In the Kingdom of God, there is no hierarchy between believers. This is because all are co-heirs with Christ (Romans 8:14-17). Twentieth century Reformed theologian John Murray writes:
It is the same Person who is the Father of the Lord Jesus Christ in the inexpressible mystery of the Trinity who is the Father of believers in the mystery of His adoptive grace.
God the Father is not only the one who adopts us; He also considers those who believe in Jesus’ name His own children.
This radical Kingdom of God offers love, provision, nurture, and care for all, no matter their status in our earthly society.
