270 Reasons: Because If You Don’t Want to Live in The Handmaid’s Tale, You Really Need to Vote Harris-Walz
Our friends at 270 Reasons are gathering a polyphonic orchestra of brilliant writers, teachers, doctors, filmmakers, artists, and citizens of all kinds to weigh in about their plans to vote this November. These opinion essays run the gamut from advocacy for basic human rights to acutely personal mini-manifestoes. Read the rest over at 270 Reasons.
Short message: If you don’t want to live in The Handmaid’s Tale, you really need to vote Harris-Walz. Long message: The “Republican” side—and I put that in quotes because these are Republicans in name only, being a cabal working for Unfreedom—is proposing that the state own women’s bodies and dictate to them how many children they must have. They are depriving women of health care, frightening gynecologists away from states that have legislated that a cluster of cells is a human being, and refusing to provide for the babies forced on families that can’t afford more babies. This is a recipe for dead women: dead mothers, dead sisters, dead wives, dead daughters. Dead non-rich women, because rich ones usually get what they want. It’s also a recipe for controlling men—fathers and husbands. They can’t support more children? Too bad. Napoleon outlawed abortion because he wanted more cannon fodder—expendable men to die in his wars of conquest. He also reinstated slavery. Consider that connection.
Whether you are Democrat, undecided, or real Republican, avoid the nightmare by casting a vote against the so-called Republicans. The future will thank you.
Margaret Atwood is the author of more than fifty books of fiction, poetry, and critical essays. Her 1985 classic, The Handmaid’s Tale, was followed in 2019 by a sequel, The Testaments, which was a global number-one best seller and won the Booker Prize. In October 2024, Paper Boat, a collection of new and selected poems from 1961 to 2023, was published. Atwood has won numerous awards, including the Arthur C. Clarke Award for Imagination in Service to Society, the Franz Kafka Prize, the Peace Prize of the German Book Trade, the PEN USA Lifetime Achievement Award, and the Dayton Literary Peace Prize.
Read more essays (with new ones added every day) at 270reasons.com.
The arguments here represent the opinion of the authors and not necessarily those of the McSweeney’s Literary Arts Fund.
