10 Real Laws Straight Out of the Handmaid’s Tale
On Thursday, the House of Representatives passed their version of the American Health Care Act, a bill to replace Obamacare with something that, among many other things, cracks down on women’s health and safety. There was one phrase that resonated a lot that day: “This sounds just like The Handmaid’s Tale.”
Should AHCA become law, it will defund Planned Parenthood for one year unless it stops offering abortions, as well as make sexual assault, domestic violence, and pregnancy pre-existing conditions for states that set up high-risk insurance pools (Note: the details about this are complicated, as many states already have protections for some of these conditions, you can find a detailed breakdown here). This is quite literally the government financially punishing sexual assault and DV victims, which are disproportionately women, and forcing women who become pregnant (possibly without access to abortion services) to face hiked premiums for the rest of their lives.