Letters to the Editor
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Slippery Slope
Yes, those recommendations do sound "reasonable," but I still can't help thinking that the health of my hypothetical fetus is such an issue because soon (possibly) I won't have the choice of whether or not to terminate a pregnancy. That decision will be made for me, much like decisions were made for Offred and the other American women in the novel. Most of those women didn't make much of a fuss in the beginning, either, when they began to lose "small" everyday freedoms in the days before Gilead was formed--and look where it got them. Far better to make an unreasonable amount of noise about it now than to regret that we did nothing later.
Atwood was responding to the influence of the religious right in the 1980s, but this era, with its erosion of choices for women who (gasp!) want to take charge of their own repoductivity, is far scarier. I live in a city where local contractors refused to pour concrete for the new Planned Parenthood facility--and in a state where pharmacists routinely refuse to fill birthh control prescriptions. So, yeah, I think it's perfectly natural to view these recommendations with some suspicion.