Sometimes, reality can be as strange or as scary as fiction. The Trump administration is currently taking steps to warn the American public and address what it sees as the growing dangers of a “fertility crisis” the US has supposedly been facing since 2007. Using fear as a motivator, the administration is pushing an improper and unconstitutional agenda on the women of America, much like author Margaret Atwood depicted in her dystopian novel, “The Handmaid’s Tale.”
Trump officials began publicizing their worries about the ongoing “fertility crisis” in November 2024. The administration has legitimate concerns regarding the possibility that if the birth rate continues to decline, the country’s economy could collapse. However, conservatives are exploiting and heightening public fear of the issue to promote traditional gender roles and the nuclear family, oppressing women and depriving them of their rights.
For instance, the Trump administration has floated the idea of offering women $5,000 in cash immediately after birth as an incentive to get pregnant. But, essentially bribing women into having children furthers the conservative view that women are simply vessels for giving birth rather than human beings entitled to the same opportunities and freedoms as others.
The White House has also reportedly considered using surveillance technology to track women’s menstrual cycles on such apps as Flo, Clue and Ovia Fertility, which provide women with easy and accessible ways to follow their monthly ovulation cycles and periods. Fortunately, Clue, a popular menstrual tracking app, has properly refused to provide the government with access to users’ personal information and data, stating, “our health data must serve us and never be used against us or for anyone else’s agenda.” The Trump administration’s proposed abuse of power and breach of Americans trust through violation of private security only furthers their already unconstitutional approach to what they deem as “problems” needing to be solved.
When Trump first ran for president in 2016, he said a woman who chose to terminate her pregnancy, for whatever reason, must face some form of punishment. He then appointed anti-abortion judges to the Supreme Court, which in Dobbs v. Jackson (2022) overturned Roe v. Wade (1973) and declared that women did not have a constitutional right to privacy or abortion. Since then, many states have restricted or removed access to abortion, while clinics nationwide, such as Planned Parenthood, have lost federal funding and are barely surviving. Women with unwanted pregnancies increasingly have nowhere to turn as the options to end a pregnancy safely become more and more limited.
“The Handmaid’s Tale” features a narrator who is living in the Republic of Gilead (formerly the U.S.), where fertile women are raped and forced to bear children for their masters. In the novel, Gilead as a society begins with the fear of a demographic crisis and the belief that women with “healthy wombs” should be impregnated, willingly or forcefully, to preserve civilization. Although Atwood published the dystopian novel in 1985, today it seems eerily similar to what Trump’s supporters would like America to become.
