Activists are donning "The Handmaid's Tale" white bonnets and red capes to lobby lawmakers in several state capitals – including New York, Texas, and Ohio – for women's reproductive rights, NBC News reported.
According to the news outlet, a new Hulu show based on Margaret Atwood's dystopian sci-fi book – in which handmaids are slave women forced to serve as reproductive vessels for powerful but infertile elites – has hit a nerve with pro-choice proponents.
At the New York state legislature in Albany on Wednesday, "handmaids" appeared for the third day in a row to silently urge lawmakers to bring a floor vote on two reproductive health bills they contend will protect women against potential federal restrictions.
"It felt like, this could very well be our future," Vanessa Giraldo, who took part in the action, told NBC News. "And it's definitely our past."
Stephanie Craddock Sherwood, executive director of the Ohio abortion fund Women Have Options, made the white bonnets worn by activists who entered the Columbus statehouse June 13 to protest a bill banning abortions after 13 weeks.
And a "Texas Handmaids" Facebook group was created to organize its first demonstration at a March 20 state senate debate on two abortion-related bills.
"Any limits to reproductive healthcare access, on birth control and abortion access, is essentially forcing women into pregnancy and motherhood," Sherwood said. "It's limiting our futures and lives, so that we are only our uteruses and our reproductive ability."
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