'We are all handmaids now' – how abortion bans in America are turning dystopian fears into reality

This article has been published to coincide with Episode Four of Mashable's new podcast, Fiction Predictions. Listen here.

It's 2019 and several states in America have passed bills that ban abortions after cardiac motion in a foetus is detected (around six weeks into a pregnancy). That cut-off is earlier than many women know that they're pregnant.

In the most extreme case in Alabama, lawmakers passed a bill that bans abortion at any stage. Other states have passed bills that enforce new restrictions on previous abortion bans.

In response, women across America are looking to Margaret Atwood's seminal The Handmaid's Tale — originally published in 1985 — for inspiration when staging their protest to these attempts at restricting their reproductive rights and freedom of choice.

Is it too early to sound the dystopian alarm bell of a society where women are second-class citizens?

"We are are all handmaids now," says Leslie Jones in a particularly powerful monologue during a recent Saturday Night Live 'Weekend Update' segment:

For this special Fiction Predictions podcast episode, we handed off the microphone to our colleagues Rachel Thompson and Rebecca Ruiz, who talk about the implications of abortion bans on the lives of women in America and compare it to the case of Northern Ireland, where abortion is illegal.

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We live in a world where people increasingly look to fiction as prophecy and The Handmaid's Tale joins a growing list of dystopian novels from the past that seem to have forecast the moral and political crises of today. That unsettling realisation is perfectly crystallised by Joe Dator, another guest on the pod, in his recent New Yorker cartoon that went viral.

We couldn't agree more.