Handmaid’s Tale author shares cryptic message to women about the US election

The author of The Handmaid’s Tale, Margaret Atwood has shared a powerful and cryptic cartoon urging women to vote in the upcoming US elections.

The US presidential election closes on November 5 and it is reported that so do the candidates Donald Trump and Kamala Harris neck and neck in the polls.

Abortion rights have been a prominent debate in this election cycle after the Supreme Court was overthrown Roe v. Wade in 2022, something that Trump celebrated.

For months, Harris has warned Americans that Trump will go even further to restrict reproductive freedoms than he has already done, referring to the plans laid down in Project 2025 – a document founded by the Heritage Foundation with which Trump has several ties.

The former president has pledged he would not do this while distancing himself from Project 2025.

Atwood has now shared an impressive cartoon by Pulitzer Prize-winning cartoonist Mike Luckovich on The Atlanta Journal Constitution This indicates how important women’s rights will be in the outcome of the vote.

The image shows a row of handmaids, complete with their red cloaks and white bonnets, lining up at a voting booth. After all the women have cast their votes, they throw aside their handmaiden outfits and walk away in modern clothes.

Atwood posted the cartoon without notice, but has since received an outpouring of support. One person wrote: “Let’s leave Gilead to fiction. Everyone vote!”

Another person said: “Women will vote for their freedom.”

Current British Labor MP Stella Creasy also shared the image, adding: “If you think this is just a concern for American politics, you don’t understand that even in 2024, women around the world are simply at different points standing in this line…”

Atwood’s 1985 novel is set in a dystopian version of the United States that has been overtaken by a radical religious sect, which has renamed the country Gilead. Under the new government, many women are enslaved and called “handmaids,” whose sole purpose is to bear children for wealthy families.

The novel has now been turned into a award-winning television show Starring Elisabeth Moss, Yvonne Strahovski, Ann Dowd, Bradley Whitford and Joseph Fiennes.

Women dressed as handmaids have appeared at protests across the United States during Trump’s rise as a political force. Many compare it to the overturning of Roe v Wade to the events in the book.