‘Tale’ of Roe woe

‘Handmaid’ scribe expects sterilizations

Novelist Margaret Atwood is accusing the Supreme Court of bringing her dystopian “The Handmaid’s Tale” to life — even suggesting it could lead to forced mass sterilizations and the return of Salem witch-style trials.

In an op-ed for The Atlantic, the Canadian author recalled fearing no one would believe her bestseller, in which “women had very few rights,” the “Bible was cherry-picked” for restrictive laws and enslaved handmaids were forced to give birth against their will.

“I stopped writing it several times, because I considered it too far-fetched,” she wrote of the 1985 book that became a hit TV series, as well as the favored costume for pro-choice protesters. “Silly me.”

She continued in the op-ed published Friday: “Theocratic dictatorships do not lie only in the distant past:

There are a number of them on the planet today.

What is to prevent the United States from becoming one of them?”

The 82year-old novelist took aim at the justices’ expected decision to overturn Roe v. Wade. She noted the draft ruling, which was leaked earlier this month, was because abortion is “not mentioned in the Constitution, and is not ‘deeply rooted’ in our ‘history and tradition.’”

“True enough. The Constitution has nothing to say about women’s reproductive health,” she said of the legal reasoning on which Justice Samuel Alito based his draft opinion to argue to end the landmark 1973 ruling.

“But the original document does not mention women at all. Women were deliberately excluded from the franchise,” she noted, saying that “women were nonpersons in US law for a lot longer than they have been persons.”

Atwood raised the specter of 1920s laws that gave states power “to sterilize people without their consent.” She also highlighted the travesty of “the Salem witchcraft trials,” and argued, “Similarly, it will be very difficult to disprove a false accusation of abortion.

“The mere fact of a miscarriage, or a claim by a disgruntled former partner, will easily brand you a murderer,” she said. “Revenge and spite charges will proliferate, as did arraignments for witchcraft 500 years ago.”

Atwood (inset) said the draft opinion was a worrying sign of the US forcing all to live under Christian values.

Critics ridiculed the op-ed. “In the United States, we have the 2nd Amendment. There’s no way in Hell your poorly written tale would EVER happen here,” conservative writer Kimberly Morin tweeted in reply to the author.