“THE HANDMAID’S TALE” by Margaret Atwood

My country, Romania, is mentioned in the book written by Margaret Atwood “The handmaid’s tale”, due to the law adopted in 1967 that made all the abortions illegal.

Because of this law, which was abolished only in 1989, many Romanian women were killed by abortions done by non-professionals. It is heartbreaking to hear the stories and the methods they used: they were so desperate that they even used a knitting needle to provoke the abortions.

This is the reason I feel profoundly the anger of American women who are revolting against the law adopted in Georgia in 2019. And I stand with them.

In the last chapter of the novel, the historians reunited for the “Twelfth Symposium on Gileadean Studies” are discussing the authenticity of the manuscript they called “The handmaid’s tale” and the reasons for which Gilead society was created.

“The reason for this decline are not altogether clear to us. Some of the failure to reproduce can undoubtedly be traced to the widespread availability of birth control of various kinds, including abortion, in the immediate pre-Gilead period.

Need I remind you that this was the age of the R-strain syphilis and also of the infamous AIDS epidemic, which, once they spread to the population at large, eliminated many young sexually active people from the reproductive pool? Stillbirths, miscarriages, and genetic deformities were widespread and on the increase, and this trend has been linked to the various nuclear-plant accidents…and to the uncontrolled use of chemical insecticides, herbicides, and other sprays.

But whatever the causes, the effects were noticeable, and the Gilead regime was not the only one to react to them at the time. Rumania (sic!), for instance, had anticipated Gilead in the eighties by banning all forms of birth control, imposing compulsory pregnancy tests on the female population, and linking promotion and wage increases to fertility.”

Kindle, 2018